Signal Fire
by bellegrey
Summary: There are certain unexamined risks when one falls in love as quickly and fully as we fell in love. What would have happened if Christian and Anastasia were just Christian and Anastasia - married quickly and still learning about one another.
1. Chapter 1

_**This is somewhat off the beaten path. While finishing Fifty Shades Freed, I found myself wondering: What if these two really got to know one another and did not quickly fall into the prospect of sharing a life as parents. What if they first had to figure out how to share a life together… just the two of them. That was the impetus for this. Enjoy. xx, Belle.**_

1.

In the picture his hands are warming my cheeks and his chapped lips are laughing against mine. "Kissing pictures are tacky," he had muttered with his teeth scraping down the curve of my earlobe. I had shoved my gloved hands into his chest and angled my head just so before snapping the picture at arm's length. The photograph lives in permanent New Years Eve bliss in a capiz frame on my desk.

That night with the curtains of our hotel pulled open we made love for hours – first slow, steady, warm, and then hot and hard, fast, rough, screaming, and sweaty and then tying, cuffing, slapping, carpet burn and fucking frenzied, desperate, climbing and climbing and climbing until we both shattered into panting satisfied shells. As the sun rose he laced his fingers through my hair at the scalp, sighing and pressing his body into mine just to be close.

"I love you," I had groaned as he rubbed a knot from the muscle cresting at my shoulder blade.

"I am so fucking in love with you, Mrs. Grey," he had sighed in response into the base of my throat. "We'll stay like this forever." A promise before he drifted asleep – a promise he probably doesn't remember, but I recite to myself daily.

Sometimes I wonder where those two people went – the two who were probably waltzing towards a litany of sins from moment one.

_We'll stay like this forever._

Just as quickly as the memory brings a smile to my lips, another tarnishes it. His words from the night he left run through my head, making my thoughts swim and my words come out in an incoherent jumble. "You loved me once."

It wasn't an accusation. It wasn't a question. It is just a statement – a statement followed by a long sigh as he raked his hands through his hair.

"I did. I do. Christian…" My voice had trailed and he had just bit down on his cheek as he nodded. "Christian… I do."

And that had been the beginning of where we are now.

My phone vibrates on my desk. I rest my palm over the screen, examining my engagement ring from what feels like a million miles away as I will it to stop ringing.

I felt and feel cold, but there is only so much I can take. I used to think of him as mercurial, but what I used to think of as a trait masking insecurity and fear has now morphed into what I have come to think of as a capacity for cool cruelty.

There are certain unexamined risks when one falls in love as quickly and fully as we fell in love. Six months of therapy has told me that the unreserved passion we had was never tenable in the long run. Eventually, the therapist said as if he were reading a page from _The Christian and Anastasia Chronicles_, the reality of his need for control would necessarily stifle me.

To be fair to Christian, and to make it very clear that I would never question our time together, I have to admit that over the five years of our marriage, the infatuation has not lessened any. I still respond to his touch and move towards his body in my sleep and yearn for his eyes to sweep over my body and burst with every secret thought and crave our moments alone and relish the moments when he sees me and the square tension in his shoulders softens.

I am just tired. I am tired of questions and directions and second-guessing.

The box on the edge of my desk chirps and the smooth voice of my newest receptionist "Mr. Grey for you, Ms. Grey."

The door opens before I can respond and there is my moody beautiful husband with a fistful of peonies. "They were at a farmer's market when I was walking through downtown San Diego." He pauses, licking his lips and offering the bouquet by extending his hand only a few inches. "I thought of you."

I smile – a genuine smile. He looks so earnest, his hair freshly cut and only the barest hint of a five o'clock shadow gracing his jaw. The Christian Grey who can tie me to a bedpost and spank me until I'm too swollen and pink to wear nylons and then fuck me until I'm melting and burning alive is the very same that is standing before me with an unreadable expression and almost unbearable tentativeness in his posture. "They're beautiful."

I stand from my behind my desk, smoothing my skirt and checking that the tail of my blouse is still tucked in. I take a moment to breathe the scent in, my fingers resting on his forearms. "Thank you."

He nods, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. With his fingers lingering on the skin behind my ear I wonder if a business trip was the straw that broke the camel's back. Surely these lips, these slightly parted lips of the person I love most in the world, could never spit the venom they did that night. His lips close and he clears his throat. "We're working on this, right?" His voice is soft – this is not the voice that hurls accusations (_that's so selfish, Anastasia_) and delivers low blows (_if I'm not enough, run away… just fucking run away_) and questions questions questions (_what the fuck are you up to that Sawyer can't see?_).

_Yes. Yes we are working on this, Christian_. I nod, taking the bouquet and setting it on the chair behind me. I want to reassure him, to touch his face and hold my hand over his heart to make him believe. But I can't muster that within myself right now because at least a sliver of my subconscious wonders if it is possible.

"Because I don't know who I am without you."

"I know." And it's true – I do know that. The reverse is true, too, but I think the difference between us is that I have found myself caring that I don't know. For the first time in our relationship we are at arms length. He has been at Escala for three weeks now and I am living in that overwhelming palace on the sound by myself, listening to the sound of my own sobs echo through the kitchen and hallways and his office as I turn lights on to not feel so alone.

My hand comes up to his right cheek and he nuzzles his mouth into it, sighing. Is this cruel? What I'm doing… working through this… "thinking" about things while he sleeps in a bed alone at night and touching his face like I have some right to him, to comfort him or to seek comfort. "Mia's wedding…" His voice trails off and I just nod. "I'll pick you up here tomorrow evening and we'll grab a quick flight down to Napa."

"Sure. That sounds good."

He nods, backing away from my hand, a steel door closing over the closest thing I've ever seen to vulnerability. "Very good. I will have Taylor swing by and pick your bags up tomorrow morning."

_I love you_, I say inside, watching him turn and walk through the door.

One night one week after he left for Escala he had come home and found me sitting in his closet wearing one of his dress shirts, my mouth inside the cuff as I cried and shook. He stood in the doorway and watched me for a moment. "I am the one who went to Escala, but you promised you would never leave me, Anastasia."

And he's right, but when I said that I was convinced that I could be enough.

Now I am not so sure.


	2. Chapter 2

2.

The next day after work my head is absolutely pounding. Between interns destroying the formatting on manuscripts about to go to the printer and authors trying to back out of their contracts, I've had enough of everyone and everything having to do with work. The first moment I have alone, I am first tempted to call Christian so he can talk down the tears rimming my eyelids and I am then tempted to pack my desk and drive to Escala to live under the duvet until he comes home. I settle on locking the door and spending the afternoon responding to emails with the lights and my shoes off. At six, I pack up my bag and leave without saying goodbye to anyone. I have officially become the boss everyone hates, but what I had failed to realize until today was that there is a _reason_ that boss can be irritable and tough to get along with.

The dull ache between my eyes has intensified to a full on tension headache by the time I exit through the revolving doors of Grey Publishing House. When Taylor opens the door of the SUV for me, I have a hard time grinding out a slight "thanks" from behind my grimace. He nods, pursing his lips, and shutting the door.

Christian is on his phone and pauses, taking his sunglasses and snapping at the person on the other end to "hang on." He is frowning as fingers the buckle on my seatbelt. Taylor pulls the vehicle away from the curb and graciously turns down the sound of the Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis piping into the backseat. "Are you okay? You look pale. Do we need to go to the doctor or something?"

I lean back into the seat, willing it to swallow me whole. "I am a generally pale person, Christian."

"You're paler than usual." He presses the back of his hand against my forehead. "And clammy." He pulls a bottle of water from the cup holder by his knee, cracking the seal and offering it to me, his fingers absently trailing up and down my temple.

"I'm fine. Headache."

He purses his lips. Without asking, Taylor hands a bottle of Excedrin over his shoulder and Christian takes it without an expression of thanks. "We could call and say we won't be there until tomorrow, go home…"

The thought of deciphering what he means by "home" is too much on top of my headache. The house on the sound isn't my home anymore because I have been spending my nights traveling from room to room trying to find somewhere that I can sleep. Escala is a place where we go when we drink too much in the city and a place where we learned each other for the first six months of our relationship. It has a sentimental value, but our house on the sound is our _home_, but only when we are together. Otherwise, I don't know what I have. His fingers, though, they are heavenly and reminiscent of home. "Mmmm," I sigh, allowing my eyes to flicker shut behind my sunglasses. Yes, the closest thing I feel to home is right here in this backseat, with my husband gently brushing my temple. "No, I'm fine. Just a long day filled with idiots."

He nods. "I get it." It's the first time I think I've fully believed anything he has said in the last six months. I take the Excedrin he hands to me with a big gulp of water. "I'll call you later," he mutters into the phone, shoving it into his pocket. I hear his seatbelt click free from the buckle before I feel and smell his warmth closing in on me. His arm loops around me from behind and his hand comes up to my face.

"Keep doing that," I sigh when his fingers work into my hair and his thumb begins to draw light circles above my eyebrow. "Please." Against my better judgment, I push thoughts of his gym bag and our current living situation away and allow myself to melt into his side.

The ride is as smooth as Taylor can manage and by the time we arrive at the airport and board the GEH company jet, my headache has given way to a bone weary tiredness. As Taylor walks around the side of the car, Christian presses his lips into my hair.

"Thank you," comes my sigh when I feel his forehead rest against the side of my head and his fingers cease their work.

"You're welcome," is his only reply. At least momentarily, the distance between us has been eclipsed and we are us again. When Taylor opens my door Christian slides back to his side of the seat and climbs out of the opposite side of the vehicle. I feel silly, but part of me wonders if the spell has been broken.

On the plane we sit across from one another in oversized leather seats and I allow myself the momentary indulgence of wishing we could fly commercial – shoulder to shoulder, his hand rubbing from knee to hip through my dress, my face nestled into the crook of his neck, breathing in the warm and reassuring scent of the person I love more than anything in the whole world. The sensible part of me chimes in to remind me of our list of problems – his quiet and increasingly frequent coffee dates with Elena, his standoffishness, his jealousy, his possession, his control, my insecurity, my quickness to judgment, my inability to wrap my mind around some of the darkest parts of him.

I can see his jaw tense as I only poke at some fruit salad and stick to sipping water. It is taking an act of Congress for him not to question or scold me about what I've had to eat today and my choice of dinner. I close my eyes and toe my shoes off before reclining the seat.

"It will be less than hour, Mr. Grey," Taylor whispers. "Can I get either of you anything?"

Christian doesn't respond right away. "No. I don't think so, Taylor. Just make sure the room is ready at the hotel as soon as we get there."

I don't hear Taylor's response and I allow myself to drift away.

What seems like an eternity later I wake with a start. After giving a quick glance to my watch I realize we've been in the air for forty-five minutes. Christian is still sitting across from me. A stack of spreadsheets is scattered about the table between us and his laptop is charging with the lid half closed. He is sitting back, his tie loose and his eyes trained on me. He is wearing his glasses – a necessity for reading that came up two years ago when I found him squinting at _The New York Times_ one Sunday morning. At first I teased him about his age and failing eyesight, but the first time I saw him in the squared tortoise shell frames at the optometrist I permanently shut my mouth. "Feeling any better?" he asks. A glass of amber liquid is sweating onto a coaster in front of him and his words have the soft edge of two glasses of scotch.

"Yes… more or less. Thank you."

"We are sharing a suite at the hotel. I hope you don't mind. I don't want our…" he pauses, clearly contemplating the right word – fight? argument? pending demise? – "…situation to color Mia's big day."

"Of course."

A shiver runs through me as I sit up. I want him to be nearer – his fingers working through my hair and over my shoulders, his lips to my temple, kissing the residual ache at the base of my skull away. He removes his glasses, presses his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose. "We'll be landing shortly." With that he rises and stalks towards the bathroom.

I don't see him again until we land and are in the back of a rental SUV.

Our hotel room is opulent even by Christian's general standard for luxury accommodations. I shed my suit coat and climb onto the king sized bed face down still wearing my dress and shoes with a sigh. I hear a soft laugh from behind me and feel my shoes being removed. I don't protest when he slides his hand over my ankle and up my calf. "Do you mind if I sleep here? The hotel is booked solid and when the reservations were made I figured the second and third bedrooms could be for Taylor and Sawyer."

"No," I respond with a whisper, turning over. His hand is cupping the back of my knee and it sends a jolt through me. "I don't mind. I…" _This is where I want you, right here… please. _By the grace of God alone my resolve stamps down as he leans forward and places a tentative kiss on my kneecap. "I should brush my teeth."

He nods, trailing his fingers back down my calf and to my heel, cupping it a moment before releasing me and unknotting his loose tie and shedding his suit coat.

We stand tandem at the wide bathroom counter. I chance looking at him and our eyes catch in the mirror. He looks like my Christian – pajama pants loose at his waist and hanging low enough to leave a sliver of tanned abdomen peeking between his waistband and white t-shirt. I don't look away. He doesn't look away. We are just watching and brushing. Toothpaste foam slips down his chin when he offers a true smile. I laugh and pass him a washcloth. Reality is suspended in this bathroom and I smile back, knowing that we are just _us_ in a crazy expensive beautiful hotel room.

When we are finished, our routines still the same and practiced from years of nights watching each other prepare for bed, his eyes catch mine in the mirror. "If you're feeling better I want to talk."

I am feeling better and the prospect of him being the one to initiate the conversation isn't thrilling in that champagne bottle crack just won a million bucks way, but it makes my stomach bubble with anticipation and my head buzz with hope.

"Just give me a minute."

He nods and walks out. I take a moment to look at myself in the mirror, pulling my hair back into a loose bun and adjusting the straps of the tank top I'm wearing. _You've been waiting for this for months_.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Thank you guys who have left feedback. I really appreciate your kind words. Hopefully the big conversation and the send off at the end doesn't disappoint. Happy Sunday! xx. Belle.**_

3.

I inhale deeply as I walk towards the balcony. The French doors are open and the gauzy white curtains are lifted and writhing in the midnight Napa air. He is standing at the banister of the balcony, bent at the waist and supporting his weight on his forearms. His hands are clasped in a prayer and his hair is tousled. Every muscle in his back is contracted. Six months ago if we were in a hotel like this our hands would be roaming and our mouths would be locked together or crying breathlessly into one another. But here we are, about to have a big talk that could start us on a path where we ruin our marriage, save our marriage, or get absolutely nowhere.

As if he has radar that alerts him whenever I am in his general proximity, he begins to speak when I step from the carpet of the bedroom onto the stone of the balcony. "I have been to Flynn three times this week and I am getting somewhere, Anastasia." I stay silent and lean against the doorframe. He doesn't turn around. "I get what's going on… I think I get what is going on and I know it's not all me." I can picture his face – his brows are probably furrowed like when something is perplexing to him. I have seen that look – a look that says _I don't understand_ – on his face maybe six times in five years.

"No. It's not all you. It never has been… I am not innocent in this. There are things I need to work on."

He stays silent.

"Tell me what's going on, so I know where you are." I need to know that he understands. He doesn't respond right away and bows his head. His hands are still clasped and if I didn't know him as well as I do, I would think he was praying. "It's not a simple hypothetical for us to solve. I know that isn't a question that can be answered in a few hours, let alone a few sentences."

That is a beginning.

"I know that I can be difficult to live with… to deal with." I fight the urge to soothe him and leave my feet firmly planted in the doorway. _No, my love, you are not difficult to live with and to deal with… sometimes the things you do make it difficult. _"I worry about you every second I'm not with you, Anastasia. I don't know how to deal with the thought of anything happening to you and when I'm with you, I want to protect you, I want you to be safe and smart. And when I'm not with you I want the people I have spent years learning to trust to be with you because it's the closest thing to me being there."

He pauses and I take this moment to approach, mirroring his posture at the banister.

"Flynn has a lot to say about that, of course." A brief smile flits across my lips. "He says that I can't keep you in a gilded cage. When he said that I was so fucking pissed off that I wanted to beat his face in, but he's right. I know I can't keep you locked up and know everything about you – where you are, who you're with, what you're doing, why you're doing it, when you'll be back."

I want to tell him that even when a bird in a gilded cage will sing and perch on its owner's finger, it would still rather be free, but I don't. It seems like a cruel platitude and one that he will misinterpret. I don't want to be _free_ from him; I want to be _free_ to be with him. I place a tentative hand on his forearm. "I don't need a cage, I'll always come back." The muscles under my fingers tense and release and his jaw briefly tightens. "As for your fear of some big bad something or another lurking, I love your protective instinct, but I don't need a chaperone to have a drink with Kate or go shopping for groceries. Leila is gone. Jack won't see the light of day for another twenty-two years."

Christian glances at me quickly, his eyes still perplexed. "I am never going to be able to shake the control thing, am I?" It was not a question I had expected him to ever pose to me. In this moment it is clear that he has been trying. I had signed up for at least a modicum of control the moment I said I would be his wife. And here he is before me – admitting that he has wanted to get rid of it completely. "I mean, in life… outside of our bedroom… outside of the playroom. I don't mean to be vulgar, but I don't want to give that up and it fucking terrifies not to have that, at the very least. But the control outside – I want to, I am trying. I can't. I don't know."

"It sounds like you're confused."

"No shit." His nostrils flare – he is angry – and for a moment I regret saying it. It is such an obvious statement and it won't take us anywhere. "Cognitively I get it, Anastasia, but I can't get my cognition to match my instinct. I know deep down that asking a twenty-seven year old woman whether she has eaten breakfast or taken her birth control seven days a week is kind of silly. I know you can take care of yourself. I am working on it."

He turns his head and looks me square in the eye for the first time since I came out to the balcony.

"You don't have a submissive bone in your fucking body," he mutters. "I lived like this for twelve years before I met you… one way or another. I need time to get it all out of my system."

_It's been five god-damned years. _I feel my throat start to close and tears prick behind my eyelids. When we first got married I was convinced that our love, and our love alone, was strong enough to cleanse his palate – that me coupled with our sex life kept spicy and kinky with me submitting to him – would be enough. "I want so badly to be enough for you." The words are pitched low and dark and come from my mouth before I start to cry. He looks at me and watches the tears stream down my face without reaching out to wipe them away or hold me.

"I fell in love with _you_, Anastasia. Not a prediction of what I could make you into. I don't want to oppress that beautiful spirit you have, that drive you have to do your own thing. God knows I love that smartass mouth of yours." He raises an eyebrow and offers me a crooked smile that doesn't touch his eyes. "But that's what I feel like I'm doing. I guess what I'm saying is I don't know _how_ to not need control… how to not need the intensity."

I bring my fingers up to my eyes to wipe the tears away and he pulls me to him.

"I am so terrified of losing you, baby – of not protecting you and losing you because I'm not enough." I let him wrap his arms around me and tuck his nose into the crown of my head. I snake my arms around him and press my wet face into his t-shirt.

"I know, but you're enough, Christian." We stand like that for what feels like hours – my face pressed into him, his hands moving a soothing circuit up and down my spine. _We will stay like this forever_, he had promised in New York.

"As for Elena…" His words are tentative and I can hear that this is not something he wants to talk about tonight.

I snort into his chest and feel the smile cross his lips. I have finally quit crying and resolve not to start again, my fingers fisting into the back of his shirt. "We've had enough tonight, Christian."

He tightens his arms around me. I know I must look disgusting right now and I know that this probably isn't a huge breakthrough for us – this conversation, his admissions, but I want to ask him to make love to me, to kiss the last few weeks and months away and move inside me until I feel like we are one person. "I need you so much…" he sighs into my hair, his hands coming to my waist and sliding up my sides until they're under my arms and resting at my breasts. He is reading my fucking mind. "I've missed you so much."

I begin to cry again when the emotion in his voice hits me. I am not sobbing or hiccupping or choking on my own breath – I am just leaking the kind of tears that won't stop even if you will them to. He doesn't say anything about the tears streaking down my cheeks as he turns me so my back is against one of the pillars holding the roof up over the balcony. "I don't know how to live without you," I admit as he backs away slightly and lowers his fingers to the hem of my shirt.

"I know." His voice isn't arrogant, but it is sure – like a fact that has been well known since the beginning of time.

He drops to his knees in front of me, his hands trailing down to my hips as he goes to the ground and never breaking contact. He noses my shirt away from my stomach and gives me a single warm kiss below my bellybutton. My stomach clenches and my fingers find their way to his hair.

He is looking up at me. "You will never not be mine. I will never let you get away from me."

"I understand that." He takes that opportunity to move the hands on my hips into the my waistband pull my sleep shorts and panties down, his hands trailing over my hips and thighs and knees and calves until they reach the ground.

"Step," he orders quietly, his fingers wrapping around my right ankle and lifting gently He does the same with the left until I am left standing before him in only my t-shirt. "If we agree on that I don't understand why I'm not at home with my wife."

I don't have an answer for him.

"Beautiful." Five years ago being this open with him before me would have been somehow awkward and embarrassing, but he has been here thousands of times before and I feel like his. "Daring wax, Mrs. Grey."

My voice doesn't fail me even though my throat is dry as the Sahara. "I thought you would like it."

"We've been living separate for three weeks now. It's a little presumptuous of you to think that we would be doing this, don't you think?" He is smiling and teasing me and it almost feels like we didn't just have one hell of a heavy conversation. "Were you hoping that I would break like this or you would break like this and we would be together?"

There is a joking edge to his voice, but I know he is actually looking for an answer. I offer the truth and say, "Yes."

"I see," he mumbles, his right hand moving up my left leg to the knee, where he hitches it up and places it on his shoulder. Without any pretense, his mouth is on me – licking and sucking.

After three weeks, I feel myself tense immediately and my fingers lock into his hair. His tongue is working diligently against me and he breathes a slight chuckle into me when I moan his name. The stucco of the pillar is rough and is scraping me through my thin t-shirt, but I don't care because the only thing in the world is my husband between my legs making love to me with his mouth. He is watching me and I am fighting like hell to keep my eyes open.

He pulls back for a moment and stills my hips with his hands. "Take your shirt off. Touch your breasts." I unknot my fingers from his hair and comply, my fingers ghosting over my breasts. His voice has a wanton edge to it that is oh so familiar when he says, "That's my girl."

He resumes his work between my legs, adding fingers and sucking and tonguing me just right. Without warning my orgasm unfurls in my belly and my legs begin to buckle. Because this is a replay of a hundred nights we have had together he knows and makes a quick switch – his right hand leaves me to grip my right hip and steady me against the pillar and his left hand leaves my right thigh and takes its brothers place working inside of me.

I am panting and keening now, my hands sliding down from my breasts – one to rest on my stomach and the other in his hair.

His work ceases only for a moment for him to give one final command. "Make it loud. Tell me you're mine."

He doesn't have to ask me. Just moments after his lips meet my flesh an orgasm rivaling the most intense he has given me rips through me. "Christian, fuck," I cry out in a near scream. "I'm yours." My voice is raw and I am actually crying now. His promise – _we will stay like this forever_ – tears through me. His fingers work through my tremors before sliding out of me. He gives me a gentle kiss on my belly before sliding my leg off of his shoulder and rising.

"You are so beautiful," he whispers when he is back at my face. The tears are streaming down my cheeks and my chest is heaving with the emotion of giving myself to him so unreservedly and the sobs threatening to pull me under. His thumb trails over the stream one of the tears is coursing. "I am going to kiss you now."

I nod and he does – slow and gentle. I work his t-shirt off and we break just long enough to pull it over his arms and head. When my fingers work their way into his pants and touch him he pulls back slightly.

"I'm not expecting anything in return."

I frown. He is hard, so that's not the problem. I don't want a negotiation over this. My voice is a whisper. "I know this isn't quid pro quo, Christian. I want to."

I grab him by the waistband and pull him close to me before sliding my hand against him again.

"Let's go inside," I whisper, my fingers working over his familiar length.

He shakes his head and clears his throat. "No, just like this, you and me – standing here, you looking at me." His eyes are stormy and I don't understand, so I comply, pulling him free of his pajama pants and working my hand over him. When he lifts me by the waist it is instinct for my arms and legs to wrap around him. "Do you trust me?"

It isn't even a question worth asking and I fight the urge to roll my eyes at him. "Completely."

He walks sideways from the pillar and sets me down on the edge of the banister. "Are we safe?" he asks. I know what he means and I feel like smarting off – asking him if he really thinks I would have gotten that wax and forgone the birth control. It isn't the right moment (if there ever is one) to smart off, though, so I just nod. He enters me with a ragged sigh like something I would expect when he comes home after a long day's work. He moves slow and deep, his breath even and his unreadable eyes not leaving mine. The only thing that betrays his seeming calm is a groan of: "Christ I've missed you."

His lips are on my neck and behind my ear and my head is spinning.

"Hang on," he mutters, tightening his arms around my waist and lifting me again. He carefully walks us back until we are at a bench. Without breaking contact he lowers us until he is seated and I am in his lap. "Move. I want you to come again."

His hands glide to my ass and urge me up. It is all I need as I match his speed – slowly sliding up until my thighs and core feel like they are in an incinerator and control my slide back down.

"That's right," he sighs, squeezing my ass and giving one cheek a quick slap as I slide down. "Again. And look at us."

I oblige, following his eyes down to see where we are joined. My stomach flips and flops and I groan. When I reach the tip of him again and begin my descent he slaps the same cheek again. I move to slide back up him and he shakes his head, holding my hips steady and pushing up. He is completely sheathed in me now, my pelvis wide and open and sitting on his. I feel deliciously and uncomfortably full. I feel his thighs tense against me as he presses me down further. My vision shifts and I am melting into him – panting, sweating, shaking. He moves my hips in a figure eight slowly.

"Stop watching us and watch me." I look up and he is looking at me, his brow furrowed. He loosens the grip on my hips. "Up." I oblige, sliding up until he is just barely inside of me. His one-handed grip tightens again and he pulls me down while slamming up, his hand connecting to my ass with a hollow smack.

I let out what can best be described as a squeal. This is so familiar and so welcome – pleasure and pain mixing in a whirlpool that sucks me down from my throat through my belly and flips me inside out. "Fuck."

"Up." This time, he brings his fingers to me and bringing me down with a stinging slap, I collapse against him and cry an orgasm into his neck. He holds me in place through my undoing – I am still clenching and shaking around him as he moves in and out. When he finishes at the end of my orgasm he lets out a stifled, "I love you, Anastasia."

We are silent for a few moments. His hand is gently rubbing what I am sure will be a bruised handprint for at least a week. "Christian," I whisper, my head resting on his shoulder.

"Yeah, baby?" His voice is soft and tired.

"I want to be like this forever."

"We will."

It is all I need right now.


	4. Chapter 4

4.

Christian is sound asleep with his heavy forearm covering my stomach and his head on our shared pillow. I am absently tracing patterns on the back of his hand with my ring finger. The loose drapes above the bed ripple in the breeze coming through the still open French doors.

I turn my head, careful not to disturb him, and sigh at the time. 3:26 a.m. It was well after two in the morning when we finished a shared shower and found our way to bed. He fell asleep almost immediately when his head hit the pillow, but sleep has been evading me for almost an hour. I need to be up in about four hours to get ready for a day of pampering with the bridal party, but I cannot stop thinking.

I have had the same image in my head for three weeks and two days now.

I was walking back to work after a lunchtime haircut when I saw Taylor camped outside of a small coffee bistro, leaning against a black SUV, his suit-covered arms crossed over his stomach. His eyes were trained on the large picture window of the café.

"Jason?" I had asked, as if I couldn't recognize him after seeing him almost every day of my life for the past half of a decade.

He turned his head and ground his teeth together. "Mrs. Grey." Although his eyes were covered by sunglasses, I knew he was trying to figure out where to get me to look. His unease said it all; Taylor is nothing if not generally unflappable, but that day he was rattled.

I stalked past him and looked in the window. There at a round sunny table for two was my husband, suit jacket carefully halved and draped over the back of a chair, his tie loosened, his sleeves rolled to the elbows, and eyes focused on an espresso cup. His hands were folded and a bejeweled hand with perfectly manicured fingers was rubbing up and down his bare forearm. He was talking and shaking his head slightly, as if the weight of the world was crushing down on his shoulders.

Elena looked as perfect as the day I first met her – her hair in a perfectly straight chin-length platinum bob, a black gauzy shirt displaying a fair amount of tan skin, eyes smoky, and her lips a glossy nude. If my blood hadn't all drained to my feet, it would have been boiling. Suddenly the world was shifting beneath my feet and I could not move for the life of me. I lowered my dry cleaning until my arm felt like it was ready to dislocate from its socket and the hem of my skirt was brushing the sidewalk. Taylor gently removed the hangers from my hand and I turned to look at him. "Is this what I think it is?"

Taylor was quiet, but that wasn't surprising – I never expected him to answer such a vague question when the answer would require what probably amounted to a treason on his main man. Although Taylor is wonderful and we have a warm relationship, I have never had any notion that his loyalty lies with me over Christian. In that moment, his silence made his loyalties crystal clear. I knew who he really worked for and I just shook my head.

I turned back to the window and Elena was looking at me, her hand still on Christian's forearm. His head was still bowed slightly and he was still talking. She had a smile bordering on triumphant plastered on her lips and it turned my stomach. I somehow always had something lurking in me that said he never _really_ cut her out one hundred percent. Sure, there had been times over the course of our relationship where I was sure he spoke to her, but I had never imagined this – him entrusting her with confidences.

Right around the time we married he told me a story – a sick bedtime story about a fifteen-year-old boy mowing a lawn being abused and used. To me, it was nothing short of a nightmare and he seemed to understand, he said he understood, that their relationship and the way she treated him wasn't normal – it was wrong and that it destroyed some part of him, even if at the time it taught him how to cope and let him get by. And at his birthday – he had confronted her, his eyes flashing in anger, and it was in defense of me. I had thought this was settled until I realized in that moment, my feet like cement in front of that sweet little bistro, that we didn't ever really settle anything.

Sure for the first few years of our marriage we were each other's everything, but with every fight that he treated like a crack in the foundation of our very identity I figured he was turning _somewhere_ else or to _someone_ else. Abstractly I had entertained the idea that maybe Elena was some part of his life. I kept on, not needing to ask questions because _god damn it we were okay_. But seeing it, her hand on my husband and his words flowing so freely, was something else entirely.

My feet were still planted on the sidewalk, my mind rooting me to the spot and requiring me to stare just so I could really understand it this time. I wanted to scream. _What the fuck does she give you? What more can I do? Why?_ I wanted to beg. _Please, please, let me be enough. Tell me you love me, please. Tell me you don't love her… please._ I wanted to hit him, break his nose, and see what the hell he would do in response.

But I didn't do any of those things. Instead, I turned around to the SUV at my back, and although I have never been one to put my fist through glass, I decided that it was as fine a time as any to try. A sound came from me when I made contact that I couldn't have recognized as my own even if it had been played back for me. Taylor, who had been standing by dumbly, not knowing how to divert my attention, sprang into action as my knees had begun to give out from under me.

A bruise was blooming across my knuckles by the time I had sunk to the pavement, Taylor's arms easing me down. "I hate him," I had whispered, not crying, not hyperventilating, just letting my mind rid itself of what it was feeling.

Christian was out of the bistro in ten seconds flat, standing before me, his suit coat abandoned at the table along with Elena. "It's not what it looks like," he murmured, squatting down. With my good hand, I had reached up and shoved him away as he leaned in and reached for my hand.

"Never touch me again."

"Anastasia… I… you have to… Ana…"

_Words. Words. Words. _He was all words and no thoughts. "_What?_" I had snapped, drawing my bruised hand to my chest. The fucking glass hadn't even had the good grace to shatter – my fist had just rebounded with a sickening crunch of bone and ligaments colliding together. "What could you possibly say to make this better?"

"She needs my help—"

I rose to my feet and swept the debris of the sidewalk off of the back of my skirt. _Her hand was on __**your**__ arm_, I wanted to scream, but I felt like he was lying to me and I didn't want anything to do with him in that moment. _She was comforting __**you**__. _"I'm going back to work."

"Let Taylor take you—"

"_You_," I had snarled, "do not get to tell me what to do right now."

I had walked the three blocks back to work, fists balled in anger and knowing the black SUV was behind me. I walked in through the front door of the high rise housing Grey Publishing House, but instead of taking the elevator up to the thirteenth floor and returning to my desk, I took the elevator to the basement parking garage and climbed into my car. After only a moment's indecision, I had started the car and left GPH behind. I was relieved when I made it out of suburban Seattle without the headlights of a black SUV in my rearview mirror. I was approximately two hours into the two and a half hour drive to Vancouver when I had pulled over to the side of the road and started to cry. After twenty minutes of deep, heaving, soul shattering sobs, my fingers grasping the wheel and knuckles turning white, I had turned around and headed back for home.

When I arrived to our beautiful mansion on the sound, his car was in the garage. I cleared my throat and checked my mascara, which was long gone. The only evidence of my tears remaining was in the form of red-rimmed swollen eyes and black inky splotches of salty mascara on my blouse. _You can do this, Ana. You have faced worse things than this. This is nothing. There is an explanation. Your life is not over… do you hear me? Breathe._ I stared at my hands on the steering wheel.

When I looked up from the steering wheel he was standing in the door leading from the garage to the house, his hands in his pockets and a deep frown etched on his lips. We stared at one another for what felt like an eternity before I made the first move and exited my vehicle.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" he had grunted, not moving as I walked up the few stairs to the landing.

The fact that he thought it appropriate to chastise my late arrival home made me laugh. "This has got to be a fucking dream."

I pushed past him and dropped my purse and trench coat in the middle of the floor, making my way to the refrigerator.

Basking in the light of the refrigerator, staring into bottles of condiments and beers and wines and packages of organic vegetables and prepared dishes in individual containers, I wondered what his next move would be. I didn't have any intention of drinking or eating. He was standing behind me – probably ten feet away. I could feel him there, willing up the next words he would speak to me.

I took the opportunity to ask one question. "Are you fucking her or doing anything else with her that you know would upset me?"

"I haven't been with Elena like that since before we were together, Ana." I glanced over my shoulder and he looked destroyed. _Good_. "She called and I answered it without looking at the caller ID." _Liar!_ _You always look._ "She was hysterical – crying that she couldn't pay the lease on her new salon, that the business was taking a nosedive, that she needed help."

At this point, I closed the refrigerator and turned to face him. His arms were crossed over his chest. "Do you think I'm stupid?"

"No." He didn't even hesitate.

"Then explain her touching you, you doing more of the talking." I paused. "Look, what you do with your money is your business. I'd prefer it if you didn't continue to subsidize her lifestyle and her dreams or whatever, but that's on you. But this doesn't add up. You have to see that. I don't get why a check couldn't be dropped in the mail or one of the fifteen hundred people that work in your office building couldn't courier it over or you couldn't just wire it to her account."

He just stared at me. My fifty, now more like three hundred and eight-two, just stood there, looking dazed and broken.

"What I _do_ get is that you seem to use any excuse you possibly can to see her, even when you've come to recognize, at least you claim to, that she is psychotic and spent the better part of a decade committing statutory rape and beating the piss out of you."

He was silent and my fists were balled at my sides. _Ana, you are done crying. Do you hear me?_

"I just don't get it."

"Flynn has said—"

"Oh for Christ's sake, Christian. I know what Flynn has said." He didn't have to remind me. The acute memory of eight painful sessions of Christian talking about his feelings for Elena (the word _feelings_ alone during the first session had sent me retching into the women's bathroom for forty-five minutes) and why he still sometimes exchanged e-mails or phone calls or quick lunches at restaurants off the beaten path was still too fresh in my mind even two years after we stopped going together. Turns out that according to Flynn his boomerang tendency to return to her boiled down to five little syllables: traumatic bonding. I continued, screeching out: "At some point you need to put up some boundaries, Christian. If not for me or for us, then for yourself."

Christian just stared at me, blinking, turning his wedding ring around and around on his finger. "I don't understand you, Ana. Fuck, I love you so much I can't stand it. You know me more than I know myself and I think I can say the same for you, but there are certain things you _don't_ get that she just… does. We have sick bond. She fucked with my head and my life and my heart and when I don't know what the fuck to do with you – when you get frustrated with me or claim I'm breathing down your neck I don't know who else to go to, okay?"

I was unsteady on my feet and moved myself towards the island, gripping the granite countertop. I needed to let him keep going because he was actually saying something he had neither said before or I had never heard before.

"You can't fathom the type of worry and stress loving you puts on me. I never tried for _more_ before because it's fucking _killing_ me."

My only thought: _Our marriage is killing him. Great._

"She fucking destroyed me and I am absolutely sick with myself that no matter how much I love you or trust you, I will never be able to detach myself from her. I don't love her. I don't trust her. I don't even particularly enjoy her company."

My second thought: _Our marriage is killing him and he needs to talk to someone he hates to make it better._

He was quiet and I was immediately back to Flynn. At the end of our eighth session, Flynn had asked Christian if he minded leaving the room. Christian hadn't even put up a fight. Once we were alone, Flynn eased me into it. "He loves you."

I had been memorizing the grooves in tan leather of the chair, internalizing the punchline of this _traumatic bonding_ business – she would always have something I could never have and he would seemingly always need something that I was incapable of giving him.

"There are certain times when trying to stay away from her isn't enough. Sometimes he finds it almost impossible to relate to you… to your life together. And when that happens, returning to Elena… the source of the abuse that brought him comfort… is what will work. We are working on it, Ana. It's a marathon, but we get somewhere every time we talk."

The inside of my cheek was bleeding from where my teeth had been worrying it. I heard only one thing: _Love is not enough. We cannot stay like this forever_.

"That said, it doesn't mean you have to stay." I released my cheek and the raw tang of blood flooded my mouth, the thought of leaving him abhorrent to me. "I won't tell you to leave him, but you can't be the champion all the time and you can't be there for him if you're killing yourself trying. A relationship cannot survive like that."

And that is where we had left it.

And that is precisely what it felt like whenever I would find a receipt in his pants pocket evidencing a lunchtime bottle of chardonnay and two cobb salads or the nights when he would come home and not say hello, take a shower, and wordlessly climb into our bed. It was killing me, knowing that she had something – as sick and twisted an urge that it catered to and enabled – that I didn't have.

For a long time – for the years following our last tripartite therapy session where Flynn had patted my hand like a child who had just lost her puppy to the day I saw the two of them together – I had managed to put a lid on that insecurity. While I had questioned my ability to be enough for him, I never actively faced it straight on.

"I love you," Christian had said, offering the simplest of pleas to make it okay in three little words.

"I love you, too." I stopped and felt my heart shattering before the words even left my mouth. "I need you to leave."

That was just over three weeks ago.

I glance at the clock again. 3:48 a.m. I want everything we talked about to make us better, to fix what is happening to us. I tilt my head to the side, resting my temple against his forehead, and raise my hand to cover his over my ribcage.

As I drift to sleep I thank god that there is time – that he hasn't given up on me and that as long as he won't give up on me, we have as long as our hearts are beating to figure this out.


	5. Chapter 5

_**You guys are just amazing with your kind words and encouragement. Hang tight to see some of your suggestions come alive! Ana is no shrinking violet, my friends. At any rate – happy Saturday! What do you have planned? I am going to have a long happy hour with someone not a whole lot different than Mr. C. Grey and come home to snuggle down in the air conditioning. xx. Belle**_

5.

I awake to minty breath on my throat. "Last night was perfect." I am still half asleep, so I don't respond and just let him whisper into my skin with his toothpaste mouth. "You look so beautiful this morning – all sleep creased and warm, your hair everywhere, lips swollen from kissing me." His hand skirts down the front of my t-shirt and slides underneath the hem. The palm of his hand finds my breast and he rubs until my nipple hardens in his fingertips. "I need to come home… wake up like this every morning." His hand ghosts across my sternum and he repeats his ministrations on my other breast. "Please let me come home." I stay silent, sighing softly as his hand moves down my belly and slips into the front of my sleep shorts. "I have missed you so much, Ana." His words sound like a confession and I return his admission with a moan when his palm flattens against me and makes languid movements up and down. "Please let me come home."

I sigh, my resolve threatening to unfurl in my belly as my hips instinctively move back towards him. "This feels like a manipulation."

He chuckles, his palm continuing its lazy course while his finger dips inside of me until I feel the cool weight of his wedding band against my entrance. My husband's lips are pressed into the soft hollow where my shoulder meets my neck and I can tell he is grinning from ear to ear. "So what?"

"So, I'm still mad and we still have things to talk about." His index finger arches to my clitoris as he moves his palm and fingers together.

"I don't want to talk right now." He presses against me until his naked erection is at the small of my back. "I want you to lose these shorts and let me make love to you."

"I haven't brushed my teeth," I protest. My objection goes to the back burner when he groans, removes his hand from between my legs, and coats himself with me, still pressed into my back.

His hands make quick work of the elastic at my waist as he expertly shucks my shorts and panties from my legs before sliding into my shirt again. "I don't fucking care. Tell me it's okay." When his fingers return to me I feel like I will never breathe again. "Please."

"Yes, yes, it's okay." In the last five minutes he has said "please" more than the last five months. His fingers twist at my breasts again, coating my nipples in my own wetness.

He carefully lifts my leg with one hand and he slides into me almost painfully slowly - his front to my back as he sinks in slowly, letting me feel every centimeter of him. My fingers grip the blanket that is only half covering us. He is moving slowly, deliberately, and deeply inside of me. "Is this good, baby?" He slips a hand between my legs again and I can feel my stomach climb into my throat – he is pressing against me just right and I am melting, melting, melting into him while my brain is short-circuiting.

"Fuck… yes. Christian, please." If he keeps up this languid pace much longer I am going to go insane. The world is completely silent except for the soft protest from the bed springs beneath us and the gentle thwap of the headboard pressing into the wall and the soft wet slide of our bodies pressing and moving together.

"I need to come home," he repeats again. My hand unknots itself from the blanket and slides behind me to guide his ass as he continues his slow assault.

"I know." My words are a groan and all sense is leaving me as he adjusts my leg so he can get enough leverage to push into me fully. When he is fully sheathed inside of me with a low grunt, I find myself confessing one thing: "I need you home."

There is satisfaction in his voice when he removes his hand from between his legs and reaches for my hand, guiding it and training it quickly to stroke myself the way he had been stroking me. His hands find my breasts and his lips close in a wet, breathy hot kiss against my neck. "You're mine, Anastasia," he grunts knotting his hand into my hair and pulling out. Before I can vocalize my displeasure at the fact that he is no longer inside me, he has flipped me over and hitched my thigh up over his hip so we are face to face on our sides. "I need to see you when you come."

I feel so deliciously warm inside right now, like someone has drenched my organs with perfectly heated tea and honey. I am heavy under the weight of how close I feel to him. He is crawling under my skin with his mussed hair and the concentration wrinkling at the corners of his eyes and his pressed together lips. My arms slip around his neck and draw his face to me. The world flashes black even though my eyes are open when his lips meet mine. We don't work into it – we are all tongue and teeth and lips without pretense.

When we pull apart he offers an apology: "I am so sorry I disappoint you all the time."

His pace hastens and I nod, knotting my fingers into sweat-slicked hair on the back of his head. I don't know how else to respond to that, so I don't.

"I need you. I need you. I need you."

Now I am crying, still nodding, kissing his cheeks and pressing my thumbs into his temples. He needs me.

"I need you. Only you, Ana." Tears are gathering along his lower eyelid and pooling at the outer corners, threatening to fall if he blinks or even thrusts into me too hard. My breath catches. As far as I know Christian has cried once since we've been together and it was when a doctor popped his shoulder back into place after a surfing accident. It had only taken a moment and the tears were gone.

His fingers snake between us again and I am tipping over the edge, my eyes locked on his, neither of us blinking. I am tightening around him, my mouth open and breath caught in the back of my throat and my stomach knotting tightly. I can feel my face contorting into a quiet scream. He is concentrating, his bottom lip caught on his teeth. _I love you. I love you. I need you to survive, Christian._ With one more thrust I am dragging my fingers down his face and throat to his shoulders, where I hang on tightly, white light burning behind my eyes and all of the sound in the world making my ears go absolutely dead.

His arms tangle around my back and pull me so close that he is barely able to move inside of me. He finishes with one long sigh, rocking his hips against me without pulling out. We are completely still for a few minutes, our bodies pressing closer when we inhale and rocking together as we exhale. His heart is hammering deep thrum thrum deep in his chest.

"Please forgive me." He dips his head and his lips are tentatively testing mine as my senses return to me one by one.

"I am trying to forgive you, Christian," I whisper, pulling back from his lips only slightly. Now he is nodding and moving to kiss my tear-stained cheeks. As much as part of me wanted to tease him and torture him and withhold sex from him until I was sure, _absolutely fucking sure_, that Elena has been exorcised from us and that he _understood_ why I was mad at this situation and in general, I feel so incredibly close to him right now and I want to try. I am going to try until the day I die, if it takes that long. I don't want to hurt him – I just want him to _get it_, to deserve another chance, and to figure out how to make me trust him again. I have a sinking feeling that I am lulling him into complacency by giving into this need and allowing him to draw me in without even a simple protest – that somehow my willingness to let him this near will mislead him into not understanding the gravity of our situation.

"I know this…us being together like this… doesn't solve anything, but I know you still love me." He pauses, tightening his grip on me. "I can't stand the thought of you hating me or regretting our relationship."

I am shaking my head before he finishes speaking. I want this fixed in ninety-six minutes, like a romantic comedy, but this isn't just a misunderstanding, this is something that can kill us and make us rot all the way through to the core if we aren't careful. An overwhelming sadness is sucking the afterglow from me. "This was never about hating you or regretting what we have together."

"Our problem is definitely not one that can be worked through rationally… me… Elena… you… the things I brought into our relationship." He pauses, pulling out of me gently and resting himself against my belly. "I did this to us."

It isn't a confession. It isn't a realization. It is only my beautiful fucked up fifty shades whispering something he has probably known for a long time. I am so tired of fighting, both out loud with heated words and quietly with calculated defiance. Over the last three weeks I have oftentimes wondered when our last truly happy moment was. I don't say what I should say – _No. No. I can take some of that blame on… I never said anything to let you know how mad and tired I am. I let it get here. I let us get here. _I can't say it because I am a coward. So I just lick my lips and gather the sheet up to cover the goosebumps rising to the surface and threatening to expose my every thought.

"I love you. Now go shower because one look at you and my mother and my sister will know exactly what we did in here this morning." His forehead rests against mine. "I will die, just die if my little sister has even a twinkle in her eye." He feigns exasperation and grins, giving me a parting kiss on the earlobe before rising to put on his glasses and a pair of boxers.

For a moment I push away Elena and his anger and control issues and focus on us.

_This, this is it. This is our latest happy moment._


	6. Chapter 6

_**I am so overwhelmed by your kind words in response to this story. You're keeping me posting my sad little wine-fueled idea. I really appreciate you all. xx, Belle.**_

6.

Most days I would be incredibly thrilled at the prospect of spending a day getting pampered with Kate, Mia, and Grace, but today the idea makes me feel completely claustrophobic. I want to throw on some running clothes and take off without music, without a cell phone, without a running partner, without someone watching the clock and go – just go until my lungs hurt, my knees quiver, sweat is dripping from body parts I didn't know could sweat, and I am lost in a place I've never seen before.

Today will not be that day.

I quickly scrub Christian from my body and slip into a black strapless sundress and make my way to Mia's pre-rehearsal dinner shindig. Christian was long gone by the time I was finished with my shower – probably taking up his own urge to run. I am absolutely green with jealousy. I feel marked by him and so confused.

When I arrive at the spa, Mia is a beautiful drunken mess carrying a bottle of Palmes d'Or Rose with an electric green straw and wearing a sweat suit with "Mrs." emblazoned across her shoulders in glittery gold cursive. She gushes about how happy she is that I'm here, kisses me full on the mouth, and presents me with my own bottle of champagne with a long fuchsia straw. "Christian is keeping us in alcohol today!" she exclaims, holding her own bottle up in the air as a small chorus of cheers erupt from her three non-family bridesmaids.

I offer her a smile, slip the straw into the neck of the bottle, and take a tentative sip. Leave it to my crazy husband to keep a contingent of bridesmaids in two hundred dollar bottles of champagne. I smile and give her a quick hug. I hope to god she'll be sober enough to keep her balance at the rehearsal dinner. "I'm so happy for you."

"Me too!" She is bubbling over and I can't help but laugh.

Twenty minutes later I am mid-pedicure, my head tipped back and eyes closed, listening to Kate recount baby Jack's latest mishap, which involved jumping on the bed and six hours in an emergency room. Not surprisingly she is the coolest, calmest, most collected mother I could ever imagine. She is perfect for the role and her tales of motherhood only serve to remind me how ill-equipped my lifestyle with Christian would be to a Baby Grey. When my fingers and toes are perfectly polished in a dusty pink and filed to perfect rounded squares and I am knotting my hair into a bun for a massage, Kate catches my eyes in the mirror. All of the levity is gone from her expression and I immediately decide I don't like where this is going.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?"

My stomach flips and tightens. I plaster on the best semblance of a smile that I can manage. "Of course. You know the same goes for you."

She turns, leaning against the slate countertop, and tilting her head towards me. "I want to know what's going on with you."

My smile fades on one side and I clamp my teeth down on my bottom lip.

"Elliot was at Escala the other day and saw something strange. He was with some guys… supervising installation of a new safe in Christian's office."

"Oh yeah?" My mind is flicking through a card catalogue of excuses to get the hell out of this conversation. "He has mentioned that he wanted to get a more secure safe for Taylor's firearms at least a few times. Didn't know he actually pulled the trigger."

She continues to stare at me, her eyebrows knitting together. "Ana, I know that Christian is living there. Your guys' living room is basically a bedroom – all of your bedding is on the couch, his clothes are everywhere, and it looks like no one has been there to wash dishes in a month."

I could blame it on Taylor because it doesn't sound like the impeccably neat Christian, but I don't even get far enough to speak. I can't lie to her. She will see right through me and I won't be able to live with the guilt on top of the humiliation and anger I already have at the entire situation.

"It freaked Elliot out, so he called Christian and Christian admitted it… admitted that he's staying there." She pauses. "He wouldn't say what happened. He just said that you two were taking a time out."

"We're going through some things." With that simple admission I feel like six hundred pounds have been lifted from my shoulders. The feeling is fleeting and it drops back own as I toss a sidelong glance to Grace who is doubled over with laughter on a plush bench near the dressing room entrance. "We're trying to keep it quiet… for Mia… for the family… our family, Kate… your family and my family."

She nods, her hand dropping to cover mine without breaking eye contact. "If you want to talk, I want to listen. Whatever you're comfortable with. You know I'm very good with secrets."

If she keeps this up I am going to cry into my champagne and ruin everyone's fucking day, so I respond with a half-nod. I don't even know how to begin telling her about what is happening. Telling her would simultaneously feel like a betrayal to Christian and an exorcism of everything that is strangling me. Getting her to understand would require telling her about Elena and the advent of her relationship with Christian – the sex, the beatings, the trauma, the things he needs that I cannot give him, the confessions he has made to me, the shame he feels for stepping out on me even if it isn't for sex, the shame I feel for not being enough for him. No, no, these are the very same things that have kept me from sitting down and having a heart-to-heart on this hundreds of times.

"I want you to talk to me."

"I know, Kate. It's complicated, but I want to talk to you. Just… let's leave it alone for the weekend." I glance at Grace again, who looks keenly interested in us. "Let's get rubbed down and just take this all in."

She takes it for what it's worth, but now that I know that she knows, my need to tell her – to tell _someone_ other than Christian or Flynn – is eating away at me like a slow-burning acid, and I am scripting my words over and over in my head.

Hours of rubbing, exfoliating, buffing, polishing, moisturizing, tweezing, and waxing later, we are getting ready for the rehearsal dinner in a tented cabana by the pool. Mia has been uncharacteristically quiet for the last hour and I wonder if she's getting a waking hangover as the champagne dulls in her system or if she's just thinking. "Ana… tell me what it's like to be married," she sighs, closing her eyes as a makeup artist moves towards her with a strip of fake eyelashes.

I cross my legs and adjust my silk robe, inspecting my pink pedicure. How the hell do I answer that without scaring the shit out of her? I don't have the heart to tell her that since Christian and I were together for approximately three seconds before we married that I'm not sure how to differentiate between the feeling that comes from exploring another person and the feeling that comes from promising forever in front of dozens of people you both love. I feel stupid, so I lie by omission. "It is like knowing what you love most in the world will be yours forever."

Mia grins until her cheeks look like they're bound to burst and Kate gives me a painfully sad look.

After we are pampered to Mia's exacting standards, I make my way back to the hotel room to change for the rehearsal dinner. Christian is sitting at the desk, twirling the stem of his glasses in one hand, swirling a bottle of Heineken in the other, and gnawing on the end of a pen.

"You're sunburned," I observe, dropping my bag to the floor and slipping out of my sandals.

He frowns, inspecting his forearms. "Golf." He closes the lid of his laptop. "Elliot beat me. Fucker. We both beat the piss out of Ethan."

I smile. As fiercely competitive as he is, Christian has rarely been able to beat Elliot at a sport other than making money. The sourness in his mood indicates that he hasn't yet resigned himself to the fact that Elliot is a better golfer or that he has been sitting here getting himself wound up to explode at me. He doesn't smile in response. If he were a cartoon storm clouds would be floating inches from his head.

"I can smell you from over here."

I sniff my arm and shrug. The scent of lemongrass and grapefruit has been around me all day and I am desensitized to it. At this point I just feel sublimely loose-muscled and easy when I catch a whiff of myself. "It was a good day." Resigning myself to his mood, I go to the closet and unzip a floaty navy dress from my garment bag.

In the full light of day he is keeping his distance from me. After this morning I had somehow harbored a delusion all day, except for the moments Kate expressed her concern, that I would come back here and he would welcome me into his arms and have all of the answers and all the words I needed to figure this out. But I know him well enough to know that his tell is stillness. He is like a statute in a chair. The stillness means that he is nervous and moody as hell.

The rollercoaster goes up. "You look nice. You got a little color today."

I don't bother responding and go to the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror. He's right. A touch of tan hints at my shoulders and the full part of my cheeks and forehead. Mixed with the hours of rubbing and lotioning, I am at the perfect line before glowing turns into greasy.

He appears in the door to the bathroom, watching me in the mirror as I adjust my strapless bra and step into my dress. The rollercoaster goes down. "My mother knows we aren't living together."

I feel my stomach drop, but I'm not surprised. It is really quite unremarkable that Grace Trevelyan-Grey never misses anything between us. She always seems to pick up on the slightest squabbles. "Oh yeah?"

"Elliot is apparently _concerned_ about us and talked to her." Disdain drips from his words. "He doesn't know the meaning of the word _concerned_."

I want to ask him why it is so surprising that Elliot is worried about us, but I don't. I don't want this conversation right now when he is this moody. I want to bask in the light lemongrass grapefruit haze and go watch my baby sister-in-law learn how she will marry the man she secretly married six months ago in Las Vegas. Fire is flashing in Christian's eyes and I find myself begging him to stop without even saying anything. "Christian, let's not do this right now."

"Why? It's not convenient for you, Anastasia?" His words are bitter and condescending. "Well, it's not convenient for me to not live with my god damned wife."

Suddenly the slight spike of intoxication in his words tips me off to the true culprit here. I roll my eyes and mutter, "Have another beer."

Before my mouth closes he has both of my wrists in his hands, holding them so my hands are flat against the sink, pressing into me from behind and sliding his nose into my hair. "I am so fucking mad at myself. I don't know what to do."

His grip isn't threatening or tight and I easily slip out of it to turn around to push him away. "Guess what, I'm pretty fucking mad at you, too. Christ, Christian."

I fasten the thin belt at my waist and slip on a pair of tan heels. Any hope I had for myself that just being with him was enough after this morning is fading fast as he bows his head and stares at the floor. This man who can turn one hundred thousand dollars into thirteen billion in less than a decade is as completely clueless as I am. "What the hell can I do?"

I don't know how to answer that. I have been trying to withdraw my feelings for three weeks, which is admittedly a short period of time in the grand scheme of things. "Stop lying to me. Stop lying to yourself."

He looks up at me and catches my eyes in the mirror. He looks lost and miserable. I expect a rebuttal, but he just nods, like it is an obvious answer. "Okay."

I feel humiliated. "I need to know you. All of you. The ugly parts, the dark parts, the dirty parts. You can't turn to someone else with that just because you think I won't get it or won't like it. Especially not _her_."

I wonder how these things are coming from my mouth because they seem so reasonable. Christian blinks, his mouth opening and closing. He is trying to find words that will keep this neutral or make it better. I stay quiet because I have no clue what the words are and can't give him any help. We stand like that for what feels like an eternity, interrupted only by brisk knocking at the door. I slip a bracelet on and look at Christian plainly.

"That's your mom."

He nods before shaking his head. "I'll just meet you guys down there. I need a few minutes."

I step towards him out of habit, seeking a quick kiss or a hug, but immediately pause and change course out the door. Our relationship has become the quietest nuclear bomb ever made.


	7. Chapter 7

_**Happy Sunday! I'm by the pool, smelling like a coconut and drinking a piña colada and getting sunglasses tan lines while I write this. If the beautiful weather and the level of rum in this drink are any indication, this will start to look up soon! As always, I truly appreciate your guys' kind words – though I do feel bad that some of you seem somewhat downtrodden by the abject misery I'm subjecting these two to thus far. Don't worry, the tale of the journey is a lot of the time way more fun than the destination. xx. Belle.**_

7.

"I can't believe you," I had laughed, my fingers gently rubbing at the sticky goop clinging to the fine leg hairs surrounding it. He had smiled, tipping his head to the side, and inspecting his ankle. "It's so permanent."

"That's the point, baby." I placed a soft kiss on the arch of his foot, careful not to let my lips stray too near to the half inch patch of tender flesh on the outside of his ankle.

There, nestled behind the slight arch where Christian's calf turned into ankle was a black swooping "A" permanently etched into his perfect tan skin.

"Don't get any ideas. I'd be so pissed if you did this to yourself." He was only half teasing; his eyes were completely serious.

Replacing the bandage with a gentle pat I gave him the most serious look I could muster. He tasted like tequila and cigars when I wound myself into his lap and buried my face in his neck. "I would never dream of it."

"Good." His mouth began to work at my neck, sucking and nibbling and sighing until it tickled. When I squirmed he had laughed, knotting his hand in my hair and holding me tight to him. "I like it when you listen."

The memory is gone as quickly as it came and I am back to the present, sipping sparkling water with Grace, Elliot, and Kate. Elliot is talking about how silly he felt with an arm of tattoos when he carried Jack into daycare earlier this week and that's when it hit me. The memory of Christian and Elliot three years ago on our annual mid-autumn vacation was fresh – sun-high and with no foresight they got permanently inked on their ankles in god knows what type of Aruban tattoo parlor. Christian had been so proud and so carefree when he told me to look under his bandage for a surprise. Over the last two years the "A" has faded slightly and I know he'd never repeat that sort of impulsivity, but I still love that small letter and can't count the number of times I have placed my lips to that very spot.

The chatter shifts and we are onto something else. The loss of the memory is a hiccup and I am not keeping up with the conversation anymore.

Our small group falls silent when Christian walks onto the veranda, his hands deep in his pockets and his linen shirt unbuttoned to just below his collarbones. His expression goes from vacant to confused in about two seconds. He looks like someone who just walked into a party and realized everyone was talking about him, which isn't even the case. I fight back the urge to reassure him that no one was conspiring against him. With Grace and Elliot knowing, I know he is probably about to lose it.

"There's my boy." Grace is grinning and slips her arms around him tightly, balancing up on her tiptoes to get the appropriate leverage into his unyielding stance. "Ana said you weren't feeling well."

"Hi, mom," he says simply, shooting a glance from me to Elliot to Kate and back again. "I'm better now. Just too much sun. You look nice."

The lie is so easy for him; moving on from _we are drowning, mom_ is as easy as _just too much sun_.

"We had a lovely day at the spa, didn't we girls? Elliot told me that you had a good game of golf." She smoothes his collar, as if it wasn't already perfectly ironed and flat to his chest.

"If by good game you mean I rolled over and died for him," Christian mutters, rolling his eyes at Elliot and softening his posture slightly, sliding an arm around his mother's shoulders as she slips from the hug. "It was fun."

Mia barrels towards us, jumping and throwing her arms around Christian's neck like she has never seen him before. "About damn time you got here! You're fifteen minutes late!"

He shrugs dismissively and gives me a half smile over his sister's shoulder.

She slips down and gives him a firm slap on the shoulder. "Well, we can get started now that you're here."

Ten minutes later, Christian and I are the third couple to walk down the aisle together. My arm is threaded through his and his free hand is wrapped around mine. I can feel his sunburn radiating out through his shirt. He gives my fingers a gentle squeeze when we part at the end of the aisle and I can't stop myself from looking up at him. His lips are set in a tense line, but his eyes are soft.

After the officiant jokes with Ethan and Mia and the soon-to-be-married couple shares a sloppy and theatrical kiss, we are back down the aisle and walking up the hill to the hotel restaurant for dinner, my arm still securely in his. The world is quiet now that the sun has set and we are at least one hundred yards ahead of everyone else.

"Ana, can I ask you something?" I brace myself. He doesn't wait for my answer. "Can we just try being ourselves for tonight?"

I drop my head to his shoulder and close my eyes, letting him lead me up the uneven gravel path to the hotel. Things were fucked up before I happened upon him at that coffee shop, but I'm trying to avoid being argumentative even though I wonder whether we are going to try being ourselves because it will help us or if it is just easier to pretend here in this moment. "I don't know if we can do that, but we can try to be happy."

He doesn't say anything, just rests his head on top of mine and leads me in silence up the hill. When we cross the threshold of the patio and reach our table, I realize we have already begun pretending or trying, _whatever we are doing_, when he says, "I hope there's something palatable on this menu. These rehearsal dinner things are always so awful even when you're at a good restaurant. I could maul a steak right now."

He pulls a chair out for me and I try to say thank you, but it catches in my throat. The family and Mia's wedding party make their way to the table in small clumps – first Elliot and Kate, who sit across from us, then Grace and Carrick, then the drove of bridesmaids and groomsmen, and finally Mia and Ethan. Mia isn't wearing shoes and she's laughing, laughing, laughing as Ethan holds her gold sandals above his head.

Christian's hand finds my knee somewhere between our salad and entrée. I let it rest there. Grace is looking at me like I'm the antichrist and I am just trying to stay in the conversation. Absently I wonder who at this table knows beside Kate, Elliot, and Grace and better, what they know. The thought of Carrick hating me drives a stake through my heart because we have become incredibly close despite his initial misgivings about the fact that I was marrying his son. Eventually the worry fades and we are laughing and talking together like nothing in the world matters but this wedding and keeping our glasses full.

By midnight, our family has disbanded– Kate and Elliot laughing with abandon, her hands indecently descending into the waistband of his pants and his hands holding his face to his smiling lips; Carrick and Grace whispering with smiles, her arm around his waist and his arm around her shoulders; Mia and Ethan giving one another a parting kiss like the world might implode tonight and they may not make it to the wedding before making their way from the party with their respective bridesmaids and groomsmen to spend the night apart.

And then there is Christian and there is Anastasia – we have moved to a smaller table to finish off one last glass of wine. Christian is low in his chair, his posture uncharacteristically slumped, his right hand flat on the table over the bottom of his wine glass, his left arm propping his head up, his eyes trained on me. I am low in my chair, legs crossed, arms crossed, and glass of wine swirling in my hand. He looks incredibly sexy with the top four buttons of his shirt undone and the sleeves rolled to his elbows; he looks almost predatory, but thoughtful.

"I've never told you about the night before our wedding." His voice tells me that this is, indeed, something I don't know, but it's not something that will break me apart. I raise my eyebrows, sipping my wine. "I was terrified to marry you. I sat in my mom and dad's room all night, just talking to them."

I am just drunk enough and the mood is just light enough for me to joke. "Were you asking them what was expected of you on our wedding night?"

He laughs, his eyes wrinkling slight at the corners. _This is real, yes, this is real. This is us._ "Cute." He leans forward and gives himself a half refill before settling back. "No, I was scared that I wasn't going to be able to be what you needed. I was caught between needing you to keep living and not wanting to destroy you. My parents… they know… I mean, not the nitty gritty or the really kinky shit, but… they know enough to know that I've never been what someone could call _normal_."

His mouth twists on the last word and if we were at any other point in our marriage than this one, I would have crawled into his lap and kissed the syllables right out of his mouth, letting him feel my heart beat until he could disabuse himself of that notion. Right now, though, it seems inappropriate.

"They had enough wits to not ask too many questions, but I was a mess, Ana." Pausing, he looks down at his knee and pushes the sleeves of his shirt back a bit further. "I mean, I think they know the basics… they're not stupid enough to be completely clueless, but they're not stupid enough to ask questions like that."

He wipes red wine from the corner of his mouth with his knuckle.

"At that point I had never been that panicked about anything in my life. I had been in my bedroom and found a pair of your underwear and I started to freak the fuck out – about ruining you, ruining everything that drove me to love you in the first place. I don't know if you can imagine the feeling even though I've said it ten thousand times. How do you reconcile the fact that you cherish someone and would die for them, but at the same time want to do unspeakable things to them in general and make sure they know who is boss when they step out of line?"

The flash of dominance in his eyes is greater in this moment than I have seen in at least a year. It is surprising and not surprising at the same time.

"So I just found myself in their room – knocking on the door to ask what it would take to call it off, who would have to be called, how we could shut down the whole production. I was actually going to break your heart so you wouldn't get completely invested. I was totally irrational and crazy."

My chest is a cage for my heart; my heart – it is huge and growing with every breath he takes and feels like it is about to explode. Even hearing about this now, five years later, is painful. I believe him. It is classic Christian who over thinks everything and destroys himself from the inside out every time he does something to really really hurt my feelings. What he is describing is the Christian who sees himself as incapable of loving another person enough. The Christian who is so convinced that he is so rotten that his very proximity will destroy others. The Christian who is deeply insecure and terrified, who can work himself into a frenzy and get so convinced of the negative that he will break into a million pieces just to withdraw.

"We talked for hours, me with miserable self-loathing. Them telling me it wasn't true – that they highly doubted I was incapable of loving you the right way or that I'm flawed. It was such an ugly mess. But when my mom asked me why I wanted to marry you, why I asked you to marry me in the first place, it became so clear to me. She wasn't questioning me, no, just saying things to make me think through it. I had an answer. And everything stopped, everything became clear. I told them they didn't have to worry about me anymore. Then I came over to Escala."

My brain flips back to Escala the night before our wedding.

He had been staying at his parents' house in Bellevue while I stayed in the city. At Mia's insistence, we were separate that night, like we hadn't been living together for months and the next night would be a discovery for the two of us. Christian and I had initially protested, but decided there was a certain old world romance and probably some karma that meant we shouldn't be together the night before our wedding.

It had been raining and I had been watching the Weather Channel for hours – just watching the surge of yellow, orange, and red hammer at Washington State from the Pacific Ocean, hoping that it would fade to green and my wedding day would be sunny. Kate was long asleep in a guest room, having succumbed to the few bottles of beer we had killed in front of reality TV and the Thai takeout we had consumed.

When Christian quietly appeared before me in the television room, soaking wet from head to toe, his eyes swollen and lip swollen from the worrying his own teeth had done to it, I was initially terrified that he was going to call it off. But then he had stalked towards me, pulled me to my feet, and I had laughed. It felt like a movie.

He kissed me hard, lifting me so I left the ground and could be face-to-face with him. His tongue was relentless and his wet clothes soaked through my t-shirt and cotton shorts until goosebumps erupted on every square inch of my skin. Without breaking, he had lowered us to the floor and continued kissing me until I was dizzy, his hands everywhere and his breath hitching in his throat. When he finally pulled back, he was smiling. "I needed to see you."

"Good." Drunk off his mouth, I slid my hands into the waistband of his soaked basketball shorts and reached for him. We made love and slept on the floor that night, wrapped around each other under a cashmere throw blanket, promising to need to see each other every day for the rest of our lives.

Since that night, there hadn't been a night where we didn't sleep together or at the very least talk on the phone until one of us was too dead to the world until the day I saw him with Elena.

We are here now. He has his hands folded over his stomach.

"So what did you say? When she asked you why you wanted to marry me?"

"I said I had to marry you because you're half of me." He doesn't hesitate. "But sometimes I still feel like I did that night. The panic strangles me sometimes, Ana. I terrify myself with the things I think sometimes."

I finish my glass of wine, knowing better than to push him right now before his sister's wedding – when the pair of us setting a fire that we can't extinguish might ruin someone else's big day.

He stays silent, finishing his own glass of wine, eyes now on the candle on our table that is only half alive. His hand reaches forward and his thumb and forefinger close around the dying flame, snuffing it out. Acrid smoke floods my eye, burning with the tears that are already there, and he looks at me again.

"Please let me come home. I can make this better."

I want to nod my head, but all I can do is stare at him. After what feels like an eternity, we rise together and walk back to our hotel room, his blazer and arm over my shoulder.

We sleep facing one another but not touching.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

"Wake up." The words are barely loud enough to rouse me. Lips are pressed into my shoulder and I instinctively wiggle into the warmth in front of me me. The lips test my shoulder again. "Wake up."

Christian's hands are running up and down my arms. Any cognition of our problems that I have at this early hour slides away with the feeling of his warm breath on my throat. I am powerless and can't help myself from groaning – it isn't a sexual thing, it is the feeling of waking up with the familiarity of the person I have woken up with each of two thousand mornings. His voice. His shape. His warmth. His smell. His sleepy baritone. "Mmmmmm."

"You need to go get ready, baby." His hands still and slide beneath mine so we are palm-to-palm. He tangles our fingers together and kisses my forehead. I dissolve into just a mass of cells. "Up."

Reluctantly, I retreat from his warm grasp and get out of bed, stretching and yawning. My heart skips a beat when I turn to look at him. I feel myself flush from my head to my toes. He just flops back into the pillows and closes his eyes, his hand dangling over the edge of the bed. He is lazily smiling and fighting to get one leg out of the tangled sheets wrapped around his thighs.

"All you have to do is stick yourself in a suit. It must be nice being a man," I mutter, shucking my sleep clothes into a pile on a slipper chair.

"It is." He doesn't open his eyes to respond, but he is grinning now, his teeth showing and his closed eyes crinkled at the corners. "It will take me all of four minutes to get tuxed up and ready to go."

I snort. It is 7:14 a.m. and I will be lucky if I have a moment alone to use the restroom after I leave this hotel suite. After a quick shower, I pull on a white button down shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. I don't bother with my hair, figuring at some point it will just be washed and dried and straightened and curled and pinned later today. As I slide my wedding and engagement rings back on and put my third anniversary diamond studs into my ears, I just watch Christian. His breathing is even and he sighs slightly on each exhale. He is sound asleep again. His mouth is open slightly and the pillow we were sharing is suffering in a death grip, his head lolled onto his bicep.

I move to sit on the edge of the bed, looking at him. I wonder what the appropriate mourning period is for this feeling I keep having – that feeling that teeters between anger and hatred and fear and misery and disappointment. Part of me keeps saying that I owe it to myself to hang onto that feeling for at least some time so I can show him how angry I am, how serious this is. Another part of me screams at the top of its lungs to stop, just stop, and to let him in, to dive in and forgive and remember what it's like to be loved fully and without reservation.

As if it weren't painfully obvious each minute of each day of the last three weeks, I need him. After making sure he is asleep, I brush his hair from his forehead and place a gentle kiss at the corner of his lips and tell him. I decide to tell him, and I whisper: "I need you."

He sighs in his sleep.

By 5:00 p.m., we have finished taking what feels like eighty thousands pictures of the lovely bride and her motley gang of bridesmaids. Kate and I are sharing what feels like our six hundredth glass of champagne, watching Mia's other bridesmaids place every tuck, ruche, and ripple of fabric in its perfect place. The five-piece orchestra is warming up and people are milling around on the front lawn of the hotel. Kate chatters on about something her sweet baby has done. I can picture the spitting image of Elliot giggling with spit bubbles as his daddy makes monkey noises. Like always, talking to her about her beautiful family makes me simultaneously realize I know nothing about children and wonder if I was born without a maternal bone in my body.

As she reaches mid-story, Elliot slides his arms around Kate's waist from behind. For a couple with two children under five they seem so easy together. I constantly wonder how they do it. I can barely keep one marriage together and certainly can't keep my husband from divulging everything about us to another person while leaving me completely in the dark. Emotion has a stranglehold on my throat and I feel completely stupid and self-absorbed. The levity of my sweet carefree wakeup call is gone. Our shared glass of Bollinger is warming in my hand and I'm trying to remember how much I've had to drink because this wedding and my friend and her husband should _not_ be affecting me like this. Five glasses… maybe six… between the two of us?

_Stop this!_ I tell myself. I feel guilty shitting all over Mia's wedding with my thoughts of Elena and Christian and Christian sleeping or not sleeping at Escala all alone.

"There's my beautiful girl," Christian mumbles from behind me as his arms slide around my waist. I jump a little and curse when the Bollinger splashes out of the glass. He laughs, sliding his hands to my hips and swaying us gently as a soprano's voice opens wide. "Do you know who this is?"

I shake my head. "Is this a test?"

He chuckles, blowing at the back of my neck. "No, no test. It's Fauré. He had a miserable fucking life. Suicidally depressed. Alcoholic. Smoked like a chimney. A great candidate for a wedding."

As far as I know Christian isn't suicidally depressed, an alcoholic, or a smoker, but I feel like there is some sort of subtext here.

"I think it's beautiful."

"It is perfect," he mumbles, his lips pressing into the wispy hairs at the back of my neck. He takes the champagne flute from me and tips the remainder of my warm champagne down in a single gulp.

"Wonder what they're talking about." He tips his head. Carrick, Grace, and Mia are in a corner, talking in hushed whispers and Mia is leaking tears and wringing her little fists around a shredded tissue.

"Don't know. Probably that she's scared and loves them and hopes she's doing the right thing."

"Hmmm. Some cold feet maybe?" Christian's champagne warm breath skims the shell of my ear. I vaguely entertain the idea that he has had as much to drink as me. "What did you talk about with Carla before our wedding?"

I shrug. "Nothing, really. She's more of a friend than a mother. She's never been great at the maternal nurturing thing. Did you talk to Carrick and Grace right before ours?"

"Yes." His lips warm the back of my neck.

"Do you remember what you said?" If I were a cat I would surely be about to keel over dead from curiosity.

"Every word."

"And?"

"I told them that they didn't have to worry about me anymore."

I turn in his arms and look up at him. The soprano has fallen silent and the orchestra has taken up something I vaguely recognize as Vivaldi. His eyes are intense and I swear to god he can read my every thought. A flash of warmth jolts through me and I bite down on my lip. His fingers find it and gently pull it from between my teeth. I wait for a smartass comment, but it doesn't come. His finger trails over the center of my lips.

"How would you feel about telling Taylor and Sawyer and all of them to fuck off tomorrow? We can get a car and drive home – no cell phones, no entourage, just you and me and some music – taking some detours to the coast or taking the long way." Before I can even comprehend what he is saying, I am nodding and he is smiling like he has no worldly concerns. The feeling is contagious and I push myself up on my tiptoes to brush my lips over his without even thinking.

Before I can say anything, the wedding planner is herding us into order and we are getting ready to walk down the aisle arm-in-arm. "Christian?" I ask as The Prince of Denmark's March begins.

He stops fussing with his lapels and looks at me. "Yeah?"

"I love you." There, in all its simplicity, is the reason that I have to fight for this.

He drags his thumb over my wrist, rubbing gently. He looks as serious as a funeral when he responds, "I love you, too, Anastasia."

We walk down the aisle. Mia cries and smiles like she has snorted sequins and happiness itself; Ethan grins like he is marrying Christmas and summer vacation and world peace. They "I do" and "to death do us part" and dip and kiss and cheer at "Mr. and Mrs. Kavanagh" with fingers fisted together and pumping in the air.

At the wedding table, Christian holds my leg steady under the table as we eat. He gives a toast that is eloquent and sweet and hopeful with a huge smile on his face and his composure only falters when Mia hugs him, the microphone pressed awkwardly between them and screaming static. My throat is knotting on itself when he sits down, smiles at me, takes a sip of water, and pretends to scratch his eyebrow while wiping at the burning not-yet-a-tear wetness in the corner of his right eye. We eat and laugh and clink glasses and the world is nothing but this beautiful white tent and all these white lights and everyone happy in the dressiest clothes we'll wear this year.

By dessert I am comfortably full and Christian's hand remains on my knee. His thumb is drawing the alphabet over and over on my kneecap.

_A, B, C, D_ – he turns from the conversation he has been having with Elliot and presses his mouth to my ear, giving me a warm kiss. He is definitely a little bit intoxicated.

_E, F_ – "I am so in love with you, Anastasia. I will make this better. I am changing. Please stick with me." I just nod, closing my eyes and tuning everyone out, focusing on the warm scent of my husband and the feeling of his breath and hands taking me over.

_G, H, I, J_ – "I want to dance with you."

_K, L, M, N_ – the world comes back in a rush as his fingers glide up my thigh and give me a gentle squeeze. I take a sip of water, looking straight ahead. Grace is looking at us with a curious expression; maybe I am not the devil after all.

_O, P_ – "Come on… I'm thinking about our wedding. We never got a suitable first dance."

_Q, R, S_ – he had whisked us off from our own reception so quickly I sometimes wonder if our guests thought we were playing a practical joke. I didn't change and we were wrapped around each other on a private jet before anyone even knew we were gone.

_T, U, V_ – I want to be happy tonight. Delirious and drunk on one another.

_W, X, Y, and_ – I nod and he grins into my ear, giving it an uncharacteristically sloppy and slurpy kiss.

_Z_ – he is pulling me up and losing his tuxedo jacket at once. Elliot is laughing at him or us, I don't know which, and we are on the dance floor. He is good enough for both of us and is all rhythm and hips and hands with a wide smile. He dips me back until my curled ponytail touches the ground and pulls me back up tight to him, moving us from side to side.

When the song slows and moves into Sea of Love he is whispering in my ear to the music, asking me to _come with me, my love, to the sea… the sea of love… I want to tell you how much I love you_.

This is a different person with me here, now. For a moment he is no longer swallowing me whole and we are just _us_. Nothing else matters on this dance floor – Escala and our house and Seattle a million miles away… all of it burning down while no one is home to pay attention. And we are making ourselves a home here on this temporary dance floor, pressed together and swaying.

When the music stops, we are still drifting from side to side, and I am not thinking for the first time in weeks. My brain is absolutely silent except to mind the gentle motion of us together.

For the first time in weeks I am thinking clearly.

"Promise me you'll try," I request. I am not begging. I am just asking.

"I will do anything."

Here, we are idealistic and this dance floor becomes a momentary utopia.

_I need you._ He seems to understand.


	9. Chapter 9

_**Hello, hello! Happy Fourth of July to those of you who celebrate (or party) on this day. Happy Wednesday to everyone else! I just want to give a huge thank you to those of you who have been reading and reviewing or sending me personal messages. They have been so incredibly sweet and surprising. I appreciate each one. It's a holiday in my neck of the woods, so I thought I would keep things relatively happy. Have a safe and happy fourth! xx. Belle**_

_**AN 2: I have no idea what happened to Chapter 9. Apparently the Fourth of July ate it/I was sloppy when I uploaded. Here it is one more time. **_

**9.**

My back is to Christian's front and he has his hands resting on my shoulders. Mia and Ethan are cutting their cake and taking care not to slop it over one another as they feed each other. Despite the fact that she is a total spitfire, Mia has had a surprisingly traditional wedding – complete with YMCA, garter removal, kissing toasts, and the promise of a bouquet toss.

"They're a cute couple," I comment absently, bringing my hand to rest over Christian's fingers. He gives me a gentle squeeze.

"Are you about ready to get out of here?" he asks, trailing one hand up to my throat and fingering the diamond pendant at the dip between my collarbones. His voice is loose from a few glasses of champagne, but not so loose as to have lost its intention.

I fight back the shiver that sluices through my chest and into my belly. "Yes, please."

"I'll fight the hoard for some cake. You find my jacket and tell Kate and Elliot that we're headed out. I'll meet you by the exit in three minutes and we can escape." His plan is incredibly clinical, but I nod.

Three minutes and one concerned look from Kate later, I am wearing his jacket at the exit of the tent. He comes out with two plates of cake in his hands like they're trophies. We walk in silence back to the hotel room. The night has cooled, but it is still warm and humid. I regret donning Christian's jacket almost at once, but leave it on, liking the smell of his cologne and the aloe he slathered on to keep his flaking sunburn at bay.

Once inside the hotel room, we wordlessly retreat to the balcony to eat our cake. We are quiet sitting on the bench where we made love two nights before, but our silence is companionable and interrupted only by the distant shrieks and laughter of the wedding party breaking up for the night. With just enough champagne to dull what is happening with the rest of our life in the real world, I take the plate of half-consumed vanilla bean cake from his hand and put it on the ground with mine. Christian doesn't protest so I know that he is either treading incredibly lightly with me or knows what I am about to do.

He turns to look at me and I move into his lips. I want to feel close to him again, to remember how easy we can be together and happy. Christian's fingers wind into my ponytail and draw me closer. When his tongue tests the seam of my lips, I open my mouth with a sigh and move to his lap. I feel like I'm eighteen and a freshman in college again, Coors Light tipsy and wrapped around the boy that _I am so totally fucking in love with_. I feel like I am learning his mouth for the very first time. Despite our midnight balcony rendezvous and delicious morning sex, Christian's body feels a little bit foreign to me and I'm discovering it again. Remembering my favorite places on it is exhilarating – the slope of his neck into his shoulders, the one in the morning sharpness of his stubble, the feeling of his exhale into me when I breathe him in.

Christian's lips move to my jaw line and my head lolls to the side. "Tell me you're mine," I groan as his hand moves to the zipper at the back of my dress. I lose sense of time and his heart rate is a metronome skipping a beat and speeding, speeding, speeding away.

Without objection and on command, he speaks into my skin, saying, "I'm yours."

_Yes, yes, yes, yes._ I arch into him and slide my hands into the waistband of his pants as his hand and the zipper of my dress move down along the curve of my spine. "Again."

"I'm yours, Anastasia. Only yours." My fingers flick open the button of his pants and I lay my palm against him. This is a very simple lesson in learning how to trust him again.

At my back, his fingers make quick work of my bra clasp and immediately find bare skin. Broad hands cup my shoulder blades and unsuccessfully fight tight satin to work forward to my breasts. Instead, he skims his hands down my sides.

But now he repeats it again and again without a prompt. "_I'm yours – all yours_."

I shift against him so that his face is resting against my breasts and the lace bodice of my dress. His hands begin working at the bottom of the dress at my thighs.

His breath is warm against me when I ask one more time and he responds one more time. "_I'm yours._" And then he adds, "_Always_."

I grip his shoulders and rise from his lap on impulse, allowing my dress and bra to fall away so I am left in panties and a pair of heels. For a moment I just look at him, waiting for my heart to quit hammering in my chest and my breath to quit coming in humid sighs. When I gain my composure, my words come out without me even pausing to gather them:

"If you ever do something like what you've done again, I will fucking murder you, Christian."

I see the gentle curve of his Adam's apple bob as he swallows. He knows this is not forgiveness – I can tell from the fact that he remains silent and he remains still. He knows that this is me needing to say something, so he is going to let me say it… whatever it is. He is swelling against his pants, but the look in his eyes tells me that his mind is a million miles away from anything having to do with sex or the fact that I'm standing here in front of him basically naked but for a nude thong and tan heels.

"Working on this is not going to be fun and judging from what you've said so far, it might take everything in me not to hate you." Something inside of me tells me that I need to say something – to stake a claim, to show him that I care. Truth is that I'm nervous about tomorrow, and I don't want him to have some false hope that simply asking me to come with him will have solved anything.

He nods and swallows again, running a hand through his hair. From his response, I can tell that is something he has known all along. I keep speaking because I need to hear myself say it, to make sure I know it all myself.

"But I can say right now, without even thinking about it, that nothing will make me stop loving you." His eyes fall to the stone patio. He looks at me again, his eyes an unreadable slate color.

For a moment I feel foolish standing here mostly naked with my hair in this ridiculous ponytail. First he nods and then he says, "I understand what you're saying."

"I am going to forgive you, Christian. I am not going to forget, but I am certainly not going to lord it over your head forever. We would wither and die if I did that." I chew on my lip and shake my head, trying to find the right words. Eventually they come. "But I need time to put out this fire you started in me."

For the first time in weeks I am thinking with one hundred percent clarity, but worry at the same time that he is not getting this and that in his fifty shades of fucked up this is how someone says _goodbye_.

"This is going to take time." I find myself wondering _well how long, then?_ He is barely saying anything, so I can imagine he is wondering the same thing. "And I can't give you a timeline."

I am met with silence, but from what I can see he seems to understand what I'm saying. I slip out of my shoes so I am barefoot and all of five feet six inches.

"I am going to go get ready for bed. I would like it if you could join me."

Without a word he rises and we walk to the bathroom together. In the mirror, I note that we are an odd sight and if I hadn't just laid it all out on the line I would feel incredibly silly. Christian has shed his shirt and pants and is standing at the mirror in an undershirt, a pair of striped boxers that just barely contain a softening erection, and black socks held up with sock garters. If he had a cigar and a terry cloth robe he'd be a perfect stand-in for a scene in _The Sopranos_. I am standing here bare-breasted and covered in toothpaste, having just told my husband in a somewhat roundabout way that I will, without a doubt, murder him if he ever sees Elena again.

When I reach for my makeup remover Christian shakes his head. "C'mere," he slurs quietly, taking the clear bottle from my hand. I oblige, stepping towards him. "Up on the counter."

His hands go to my hips and urge me up onto the countertop. He drenches a cotton pad with makeup remover and intently looks at my face.

"You're beautiful all made up, but you're not _you_ right now." He swipes the cotton pad across my forehead down my temple and over my jaw. "You don't need all of this."

"Mia was insistent on the pre-wedding shellaqing," I mumble, fighting the urge to smooth the crease between his eyebrows away with my thumb. Although it was only seventy-six degrees outside this evening, the humidity was high enough that she was worried about sweaty photographs and melting faces.

He tosses the tan and glittery cotton into the sink and reaches for a clean one before working down the bridge of my nose and over the corners of my mouth. His thumb wipes at the gloss and lip stain still coloring my lips a deep pink. "It's like she dyed you." I smirk and he plants a small kiss on the right corner of my lips. My breath hitches. Reaching forward, I pull him closer to me by his boxers.

"Close your eyes," he whispers, drenching another cotton pad with makeup remover.

I comply, as if I have any choice in the matter and as if closing my eyes isn't the response I automatically have when he is looking at me like he is. I slip my fingers under his shirt and ghost my hand over the wiry hairs on his belly and over the curve of his hip. He works the cotton diligently over each eye before moving his fingers to the ponytail at the nape of my neck. I open my eyes and watch him, his lips set in concentration and the crease between his eyebrows deepening with each bobby pin he excavates from the swarm of curls. His fingers carefully work through the hairspray until my hair is as soft as it is going to get without a shower and deep condition.

"Am I back again?" I whisper when he stops.

He nods, his eyes trailing from my face to my breasts and back up. His hands move from my mess of a hairdo over my throat, down between my breasts, and to my hips. I glance down – he is hard again. At once I feel inexperienced and like a wanton sex goddess. I want his hands and lips and eyes everywhere. I want to be on him and around him and in him. My lungs feel like they are in my stomach when he grabs my hips and moves me towards the edge of the counter.

I feel like begging because my stomach is knotting and I have the sudden realization that I need my husband to show me that he wants me. The look in his eyes says he needs me; I want him to show me that he wants me and only me, that he needs me and only me. I want to revel in my selfishness and never let him out of my sight again. My need for him is overwhelming and I feel dizzy, but I don't want to plead with him for it, so I move to initiate something more by curving into his chest and drawing his face to me. Our lips come together with a crash of mouths and his reaction is a hiss and kiss so deep it feels like he is pouring himself into me. We work into a rhythm of tongues and arches and he hums approval when he tests me with his fingers only to find that I'm ready for whatever he has planned.

"This isn't going to be fucking, but it's going to be fast." His words are gritty and hold promise of exactly what I want to happen.

Without response, I draw him out of his boxers and move my hand until he is fully ready. Slipping my thong to the side, he slams into me with a sharp thrust and a grunt. I cry out and grab for his biceps to keep myself from falling over into the sink. Our pace is frenzied and sharp, punctuated by _I love you_ and _I need you_ and, as promised, he finishes quickly before stroking me until I come apart around him and am left loose-boned and panting.

Leaning back against the mirror, I lift myself and allow him to remove my underwear. His fingers work into me once more to feel out the last tremors of my orgasm and his lips go to my neck. He coaxes me through the final few jolts of my body before smiling and peppering my hairline with a few kisses. Reaching for a washcloth, he runs it under the faucet before gently cleaning me and then using the same cloth to clean himself. "Bed?"

I am suddenly incredibly tired and find myself nodding, wrapping my arms around his neck. When he picks me up, I wrap my legs around him and don't bother unwinding them when he lowers us to the bed.

We are completely quiet as we drift away.


	10. Chapter 10

_**Well, hello there! It has been ages. I have no good excuse – just a wonderful end of the summer that got away from me. It's wonderful to be back and in the swing of things. How are you? xx. Belle**_

**10.**

The front desk calls our room at five in the morning with a wakeup call. I mutter profanity into the pre-recorded message and flop back into the bed I've been sharing with no one at all for the last however long. Christian is nowhere to be seen – his pillow is cool and stuffed between the mattress and the headboard. I don't indulge my curiosity as to where it's been, mostly because of the wretched hour. Even the most nascent fingers of sunlight are only just hinting at the horizon. It's too early for humanity to be up and about and productive.

I allow myself to fall only halfway back to sleep before rising. This morning has a purpose. _Christian. Road trip. _"_You and me, baby,_" he had whispered into my hair. Yes, that is worth getting up for.

After getting ready and pilfering a pear from the fruit basket by the elevator, I follow the only directions I have – a note that had been tucked under my toothbrush and scribbled on hotel stationary in Christian's usual third grade scrawl – _Downstairs whenever you're ready - C_. Taylor and Sawyer are manning the foyer door and my heart sinks momentarily. I find myself hoping that they're not coming with us because his offer had so much promise – just the two of us, the open road, gas station bathrooms, singing along to music, warring one another on the side of the road or at a historical marker pull off with Cheez-It orange dusty fingers and eventually sinking into one another with our lips and bodies. I had held these things out as a hope for what today offered. The idea of a security detail trailing us in their black SUV, black clothes, and black sunglasses, even at a distance, is almost too much to take.

I want to be anonymous – just a gal and her guy.

Before the thought of Taylor and Sawyer tagging along and the broken promise of alone time can fully form, Christian is bounding through the lobby with a wide grin. "Ready?"

Half tired and halfway into an absurdly unladylike bite into the pear, I slurp out an "uh-huh" with a dribble.

He slips his easy arm around my shoulder and leads me out of the hotel. Sometimes I'm surprised by how easily he ignores my less graceful moments.

"Porsche Panamera Turbo," he says, like that means something to me, and opens the passenger door of what appears to be a spaceship. He takes the bag that I will live out of for the next thirteen hours and drops it into the smallest back seat ever fashioned. He is breezy and loose-limbed in a pair of Ray Bans, loose ripped up jeans, and a navy t-shirt. His hair is sticking out in every direction like he's spent the better part of the pre-dawn hours with his fist in it.

The car starts with a hum and Taylor and Sawyer are nowhere to be seen and wherever they are, they apparently don't warrant a goodbye because Christian eases the car out of the parking lot without so much as a wave. No, they're not following. My heart slows its rapid thrum thrum of dread and my stomach untwists. Just Christian. Just Anastasia. Good.

We are out of the city and on the open road by the time I finish my pear. Christian doesn't mention the fact that most of the juice ends up on my shorts and the leather seats of this car that apparently materialized from thin air over night.

"You're quiet," he observes, downshifting and quietly cursing as we come up behind two semi trucks. I really don't know what he expects me to say, so I shift in my seat, tucking one leg under myself as best as I can. Six months ago this would be normal; we would be singing along to something or talking about nothing and everything at once or just sitting in silence that was completely okay. If he was quiet or if I was quiet it would go without observation and our hands would tangle over the gearshift.

I don't want to spoil this moment, so I sink back into the headrest and look at him. "Yeah. Someone kept me up late."

I don't even need to look at him to know that he's grinning like the cat that caught the canary.

When the truck in the left lane passes the one in the right, he shifts up, checks his blind spot, and allows the car to accelerate with a soft purr. There is a certain ease to him today – his body moving easily, the tension from his jaw gone. I have missed him like this. My cell phone rings and he frowns. "I turned mine off and stuck it in the glove box."

I look at the screen and feel a swell of panic rise. While Grace and I have a warm relationship, a call from her before the sun is fully up is a little bit out of the ordinary. "It's your mother."

He grits his teeth and shakes his head. "Ignore it." It's my turn to frown. I mute the ringer and put my phone into the glove box, which contains a bill of lading, which I assume is for the car and is something I'm sure I'd rather not read, and his BlackBerry. We sit in silence for what feels like forever. Eventually the world shifts as my eyes close – we are listening to The Kinks and I am falling asleep, having an absurd half-awake dream to the lyrics of the song where I'm calling myself Lola and drinking champagne that tastes just like coca-cola and Christian is telling me he's not dumb, but he can't understand something, something, and then nothing.

When I wake the dashboard says it is 7:15 – I have been half asleep for less than an hour. I blink a few times and adjust in the seat. Christian's hand finds my knee. The radio is low and Christian's lips are moving.

It takes me a minute to realize that he isn't singing, he is talking. I don't know if he is speaking to me because he knows I'm awake or if he has been talking to me all along. I decide that I'll just listen.

"I knew when I saw you that night with Elliot and Kate's kids that it was going to be a problem. I couldn't fucking get out of there fast enough."

I instantly know what he is talking about.

Elliot and Kate were on a third honeymoon. Carrick and Grace had plans with some of Carrick's colleagues and I had volunteered to watch Jack and Connor. I had given Gail the night off and Taylor was nowhere to be seen. From the moment the door slammed behind him, I knew that Christian was in some sort of foul mood. His briefcase had made a hollow thwap noise when it hit the tile floor and his fingers were knuckle-deep in his tie before he had even said hello. Jack was vroom vrooming yellow plastic blocks into the kitchen cupboards and chattering mindlessly to himself. Chubby little Connor was on my hip, his fingers coated in a sticky slime of neon sweet potato and reaching reaching reaching for his uncle with one hand and fisting the diamond at my throat with his other. Christian had muttered something about getting work done and quickly turned on his heel.

When he had come to bed around midnight he was quiet as a mouse except for his sighs. After he had undressed down to his boxers and slipped into bed next to me, he had turned his back to me and punched his pillow into a ball and said nothing.

I knew what his deal was then and I know what it is now – kids. More specifically, the fact that I see our family growing and he only sees the two of us.

"You looked so happy and beautiful, even all tired with your hair all over and baby food up and down your shirt." He pauses and I take the opportunity to glance over at him through my sunglasses. His jaw is set and he more invested with this family conversation than I've ever seen him. He is engaged, but not in the cheesy and funny _I want to sell you an idea_ way that he can sometimes have. "You looked so perfect there – like you were made for it and it was just then that I realized that I was holding you back."

"You're not, though," I respond, resting my hand on top of his. His fingers are deep in my knee now and his grip is verging on uncomfortably tight. I am choosing my words wisely because he looks like he is about to chew through the side of his cheek. "You're not holding me back, Christian. I want a family with _you_. I married you because I love you. I want a family with you because I love you."

"If this doesn't work out, you'll find someone who you will love just as much as you love me, Ana. Someone who can give you what you want, and there won't be this constant need to fix me." Niagara Falls and an atom bomb and sirens go off in my ears and I hear nothing. My vision whites out and I want to fucking kill him. He must see it because he shakes my knee. "I don't mean that I doubt that you love me. I'm just saying that someday you're going to resent me for continually saying 'no' to you… to a family. In this hypothetical world where we're over, you'd be able to find someone. I refuse to believe someone like you – someone who can love so completely and openly – can't find someone else."

I feel my eyes burning. _No. No. No. Do not cry. _"You're making this worse."

"That was what kind of set me off… seeing you with them like that, all perfect… like you had something you've been waiting for... that's what made me do it."

He falls silent again. It is clear that I will have to give something to get something more. "What do you mean?"

"Talking to Elena… starting to let her back in." _Oh_. My eyes are trained on him and I am fighting with every fiber of my being to not shout accusations at him and hurl every hurtful utterance I can muster into the conversation. "I went to my office and I called her. I told her what happened. We met up for lunch the next day."

_The cobb salads. The bottles of wine._ I know this story; other than what was served for dinner, I just don't know the details. I've seen the receipts. I tried to ignore them. I can't ignore it in the confines of this absurd car because he is making sure I get the who, what, where, when, why, and how of it all. That said, he has been talking for less than a minute and already I wish I could get past the thought of him sitting in our home on the phone with _her _while I sat in the next room playing with our nephews.

"I don't think that I will ever be able to give you that, Annie." _Annie. _He reserves the name for times when he is chastising me or saying something that he knows could kill me. The confession just bubbles out of him, like it's been steeping in him for years. I let it sink in for a moment because in all of the times we have had this conversation in our five years of marriage, he has never said it so plainly, so openly, so flatly convinced, like it is a scientific principle – gravity, the earth as a sphere, some other shit I should know, but don't at the moment. "I saw you there, so perfect with Connor… so comfortable… so ready. We've talked about it a thousand times, and until that moment I had never pictured losing you so fully… losing you to a child, even if that child was half of me."

I feel sick to my stomach. My mind begs and pleads: _Just… stop… talking_.

He doesn't stop and I can't summon the words to say anything. "I would fuck a kid up. I know that. I told Elena what I saw… you, looking so comfortable. I told her that I'm worried that I can't give you that." He has both hands on the steering wheel and his knuckles are white. He sounds furious, but his voice is soft. "When I quit school, I came home and we were completely out of control…. Fucking, drinking, finding the darkest and dirtiest corners of clubs, and doing it over and over."

He is sneering. The very idea that thoughts and memories of that time are flooding him is making the pear churn in my stomach and acid rise in my throat.

"One night I asked her why she never had children or never remarried. She just laid it all out – everything that I had already thought… that this… this… thing that afflicts the two of us… me… makes parenting a tricky proposition. And she's right – I didn't need her to tell me that."

The well of Elena's pollution runs deep. "Let me get this straight," I begin, finding myself somewhat shocked at the eerie calmness of my voice. "You talked to Elena about us… about us and starting a family. About me being a mother and you being a father."

Saying it out loud makes it sound even worse. Fuck. "She said everything I have been telling myself for years." Although it has been in slightly less certain terms, he has been telling me the same thing for years, too.

"It never crossed your mind to tell me?" I had expected to choke on my words, to have to repeat myself, but the words are clear and the question requires only his 'yes' or his 'no.'

When he is quiet, my fingers begin to work over the door handle. After a moment, he pulls off to a shoulder shaded by an overpass. His words are soft. "You would never listen. Even if you did, you would never understand."

Whether this is true or not, the thought disgusts me, and I need to put space between us. I need out of this car. I need air in my lungs that isn't shared. I need to grind the tears out of my eyes before they fall.

The last thing I hear as I stumble from the car and begin to walk is his sixteen hundredth: "I'm so sorry."


	11. Chapter 11

_**I've always thought author's notes like this were a little self indulgent, but now I understand why they get written. I'm just going to go ahead and lay it out: The number of people who have reached out to me with something incredibly nasty to say is really surprising. The number of people who have reached out to me with a lovely word and their thoughts – both as reviews and private messages – is even more staggering. To those of you who had constructive criticism or who are happy to be on this ride, I thank you a million times over. You've brought a huge smile to my face. To those of you who have called me any number of things based on where you perceive this to be going (I'm sure we can all figure out what those things are – one of them starts with "b" and rhymes with "pitch"), I wonder why you feel the need to take fan fiction so seriously as to call someone you don't know and have never met names. Just a thought. Warm tidings for a happy Saturday night and a wonderful weekend, everyone! xx. Belle**_

**11.**

Christian allows me five minutes before approaching me on the side of the road and lowering himself to a squat. "You're pissed. I get it. I am pissed, too. But if you think I'm going to let you sit in oncoming traffic on the side of a freeway for another minute you've got another thing coming."

He offers a hand. I take it. His palm is sticky with sweat. He brushes the highway debris from the back of my shorts and tucks my hair behind my ears, letting his fingers stray on my earlobe for only the shortest of moments.

"I wanted today to be something other than what it's become."

I nod because I had the same wish when we left the hotel. Instead, we have devolved into a pageant of him telling me the things I have been begging to know and now wish I could forget and explaining all the ways I'd be better off without him. Over the years, a number of our fights have fallen prey to this – where he starts reciting the ways he will ruin me and tries to convince me that breaking his heart is the only way to save myself. I breathe deeply and remove my sunglasses, taking a moment to adjust to the glare of the sun before speaking. "You need to start believing that you can talk to me, Christian – that what you say won't send me running for the hills. She is a monster and she never stops manipulating you."

His Adam's apple bobs gently in his throat as he tries out a tentative nod.

"And if you ever, _ever_, talk to me like you want me to leave you again or tell me about this fucked up little world where I leave you and somehow do better without you, I will do it, Christian. I will do it in a god damned heartbeat." I am crying now, the thought of leaving him alone enough to bring me to this point. I allow him to pull me against his chest and start speaking into his collarbone, crying into his shirt, and wrapping my arms around his waist all at once. "I could never be better off without you, but if you keep trying to drive me off…"

I can feel my tears and snot and breath on his shirt as I speak, but I can't stop crying this time. I can't hold it in right now. "I am so bad for you… look what I do to you," he mutters into my ear, his words laced with the anger and self-loathing that keep us circling this drain. "I just worry that my loving you so much and you loving me is the end of you."

His words are all wrong, but I know what they mean. He would rather see me happy than keep me and see me drowning, but he has it all wrong. I want to tell him to quit making me cry, quit doing fucked up things, and it won't be the end of me… the end of us. I am shaking my head against his chest, sighing word after word: "I love you. I will _die_ without you. I will fucking wither and die without you." My mind chastises the melodrama of the words I am choosing, but I can't hold them in because it is what's true. "You're it for me, Christian."

His chin bumps the top of my head and I know he is nodding. The arms around my ribcage are crushing me but are still nowhere near tight enough.

"Talk to me, be with me, trust me," I plead. "You have to move on from her. You have to. I will try every day for the rest of my life to understand you and what you've been through and why you want the things you want, but you have to let me try a little bit… to figure out how. You have to let go of whatever it is that keeps you going back to her."

There is no hesitation in his voice when he says, "I will never talk to her again. I swear to God, Anastasia. I can't keep doing this to us… to you."

I tip my head up and my eyes rake over his face. I have heard this before and my mind drums up the thousand scenarios in which this has happened before in an alternate universe where it didn't take me this long to find out, the hundred times he has told me she is gone, and the million ways it will destroy me if he breaks his promise again. I am sure I am an unholy mess of mascara and tears and snot, but I don't care. I need to see him when he tells me this – I need to see something different this time.

And there is something different this time. He looks like he has been hollowed out and like he wouldn't have the strength to lie to me if his life depended on it. I am close enough to him to feel his uneven breath on my cheeks and see through his sunglasses and make out the tears lining his lower eyelashes. "You have to believe me," he whispers, his hands on my shoulders and the smallest skip in his voice betraying the rising storm of emotion hastening his breathing and threatening tears. "You have to believe me. Please, Ana. Say you believe me."

I pause a beat, holding my breath to stifle a hiccup that threatens to ruin our new found rhythm. "I want to leave her name here, Christian. I can't live like this anymore – waiting for her to swoop in and choke us to death."

"She stops here," he agrees simply, dropping a worried kiss to the top of my head. "I promise." I press my face back to the wet spot on his shirt and close my eyes. I can feel the sob in his chest before I can hear it, but seeing it on his face and telling him it will be okay is too much for me right now, so I just leave my face against him, bring my hand between us, and rest it on his stomach.

When we finally separate and return to the car, he doesn't make a show of hiding the fact that he's wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his t-shirt.

One hour later, the anger is falling off with each minute that passes. My mind is constantly working and I've nearly chewed a hole through the side of my cheek. My part in this hits me as I mop my face up with wet paper towels inside a one-pump rusty filling station. The words are tinged with Flynn's unplaceable accent: _You can choose to hang onto these things forever, Ana, or you can let them go, but you can't hang onto them and have him. _Christian is not the only one of us that has to figure out some way to move on.Something flavored like hope finds me and I buy us both sparkling waters and bags of chips.

Two hours later, I am talking to him again about the most mundane things – like how I'm not sure I like the new copywriter in advertising and how the new summer intern from Berkley is absolutely terrified of me. He tells me about the new furniture in his office and a men's crew team Elliot has talked him into joining. I am aimlessly scrolling through songs on his iPod. "Pick something good," he orders, his voice tinged with cautious note of humor, like he's not sure he can joke with me right now. He licks his jalapeño greasy fingers and plunges them back into the bag for another chip.

I turn in my seat and choose Benny and the Jets. Before the first lyrics make their way from the speakers he is Elton John playing the piano on my knee and shaking his head to the beat. I can't fight the smile that's pushing its way through the seam of my lips as he turns to me with a goofy, toothy grin. He sings along, tipping his head back and tapping the steering wheel with his index finger. This feels like us – like Christian and Ana, the early days – before all of the drama and the lies and arguments with so many hateful words tossed back and forth between us.

We stop for a late lunch at a little dive tucked off an unpaved road in Oregon and the something-teen waitress recognizes Christian, asks for an autograph, and seems utterly bewildered at his lowbrow taste when he orders two Coors Lights, two burgers, and a side of fries. I tease him, a fry in hand, gesticulating wildly and mentioning that he's probably as famous as the guy who started Facebook and maybe, just maybe, a bit cooler than him, too. Christian leans forward and bites the fry to silence me. "You're just jealous that no one recognizes you."

I snort a laugh and drag a fry through the small river of malt vinegar slowly leaching from my half of the plate to his. When GEH had coasted to the top of Forbes' list of America's Largest Private Companies about a year before, his picture had been plastered on magazine covers from sea to shining sea and our life of relative obscurity outside the Pacific Northwest had been shattered. People take to him more than ever now. "Yes, wife to the illustrious Christian Grey – philanthropist, entrepreneur, genius, megalomaniac, sexpot, playboy, and tabloid fodder. What isn't there to be jealous of?"

He is steals the vinegar soaked fry from my finger and chews on it thoughtfully. His lips twist into a slight grimace. "Yeah, still hate vinegar on fries." He steals another one anyway, rolling his eyes theatrically when the vinegar leaks from the saturated fry and streaks down the side of his palm. The banter is so normal that for at least this moment I can forget everything and focus on absolutely nothing but warring my husband for the fries that I haven't destroyed with vinegar.

The rest of the drive flies by in record time and for the last forty minutes he has been reading aloud from the sleazy romance novel that he purchased at the restaurant, his arm out the window allowing his hand to float palm-down, weightless. "This'll make you blush, Ana. They're going to have sex in a barn."

"Concerned for my virtue after all this time?"

I can hear the smile in his words when he responds, "No. Not at all. I think I've managed to keep your virtue well-soiled for the last six or so years."

Every now and then he makes a fist like he could catch the air if he tried hard enough. We are crossing into Tacoma just as cowboy Quinton is about to take English city girl Alexandria as his wife.

"This is too much, even for me. We'll save this for later," he mutters, quickly paging through the remaining pages of the paperback with a frown. He stuffs the book into the glove compartment. "I'm glad you've taken the publishing company in a different direction than _Cowboy Takes a Wife_. You're going to make that company a shitload of money this quarter."

"I bet those skeezy bodice-rippers make ten times more than my socially aware hipster novels and postmodern memoirs."

He shrugs, bringing his arm into the car for the first time in hours and shutting the window. We are nearly to Seattle now and I can feel his unease in the seat next to me. All of it is released to the open when he asks, "Are you taking me to Escala or are you taking me home?" It is a fair enough question and his words are devoid enough of anger that I know he's not itching for one final fight.

I hesitate, gnawing on the side of my cheek. "Escala… I just figured I could grab a ride home with Taylor. No need for you to take me up there and double back down."

"I see." Except for the pounding of my heart and the rush of blood in my ears, everything is silent.

"I'm sorry. I just need…" My voice trails off and I turn to him. He is shaking his head, his eyes pleading with me to stop the guilt from simmering over.

"Time. I get it, Ana."

I return his shake with a nod and bite down on my lower lip, not wanting to let any words tumble out that I might later regret. "Just a few days, I think. I just need to get myself together, to set things straight, you know?" I clamp down on my lip again, willing myself to shut up. My stomach is flip-flopping as I take the exit that will lead us to Escala rather than to our home. A few days. I promised a few days. I want him there now, but can't make my brain meet my heart and let my mouth say as much. He is still quiet and he reaches for the radio. I catch his hand with mine and bring them to rest on top of the gearshift, squeezing his fingers in mine. As I pull towards the parking garage, he lifts our hands and kisses the back of mine.

"It's okay. I'm okay. We're going to be okay."

I nod again.

"Are you busy tomorrow night?"

I shake my head; my heart is still hammering in my chest as I pull into the empty parking spot next to Taylor's SUV. Christian's lips and breath are still within striking distance of my hand and I am fighting the urge to cling to him, to ask him home, to tell him to kiss me and touch me and make love to me in our bed until the sun comes up.

"Want to make dinner?" My heart skips a beat. In the last two years we have taken to a Monday night ritual – grocery shopping, sending Gail and Taylor on their way, and cooking up dishes that oftentimes border on inedible.

"Uh-huh." I sound and feel so stupid right now, like I'm that silly twenty-one year old sitting in a coffee shop sipping weak tea with a crazy beautiful unattainable man.

"Six?"

It's early for both of us, but I nod again and he smiles.

"Good." I don't think either of us knows how to end this, so he brushes his lips over my knuckles one more time. I feel this moment coming to a close – Taylor is lurking by the elevators in all black, his arms crossed over his stomach and I don't know how much longer I can keep myself from begging Christian home before either of us is ready for it.

As I open the driver's side door and go to step out of the car, Christian catches me by the elbow, gives me a look as serious as the end of the world, and says, "Hey, I love you."

I know. I know he does, so I allow, "I love you back."


	12. Chapter 12

_**Happy Sunday! Thank you guys for being such gems in light of my slight tantrum. I appreciate your kind words. xx. Belle**_

**12.**

Monday is a blur. The stack of e-mails unanswered from my Sunday road trip is quite literally astounding and by noon, my morning coffee is ice cold and only half gone. I curse the blinking light of my voicemail and check my watch for the fiftieth time in two hours. By four, all I can think about is Christian and our dinner that feels like our first date. By four thirty, any pretense of productivity has been lost and I have spent the last twenty minutes chewing on a two hundred dollar pen, just thinking. By four forty-five, I give up and gather my things to leave. I am in charge of the place, but still feel like I am sneaking out class. I almost cringe when the nervous Berkley extern says, "Good night, Mrs. Grey."

True to first date form, I spend the entire drive home trying to come up with witty things to say and to figure out what I am going to change into. By five I am in our walk-in wearing a bra and a pair of shorts, pawing through shirts and chewing a hole through my lip. The doorbell echoes down the hallway and it takes me a moment to realize that it's probably Christian. _He rang the doorbell_. I pull a navy blue v-neck sweater on and, even though no one else is here, I try my damnedest to not look desperate racing towards the front door in my bare feet.

Sure enough, it's him. My mind doesn't riddle through the permutations of our living situation and whether it was weird for him to ring the bell. Instead, I breathe a sound that approximates a "hello" and he smiles, his eyes casually moving across the entryway and towards the kitchen as if he is trying to find the changes in our home since he has been gone.

"I picked some stuff at the market."

I take one of the brown paper bags from him and shut the door as he shuffles into the entryway and toes his shoes off.

"Just whatever was fresh. I thought maybe we could do that pineapple salsa you make. Or something else."

He rakes a hand through his hair and we walk towards the kitchen.

"I'm going to admit something." He pauses and stuffs his hands into his pockets. "I am incredibly nervous."

I turn to look at him and he is scratching the back of his neck. I can empathize because I am as quiet as he is chatty. It is ironic considering our first time alone together in private, and I say as much. "The first time you brought me to Escala you were planning to truss me from the rafters and fuck me and whip me silly and you never so much as missed a beat."

He shrugged, digging into one of the grocery bags. "This really matters to me. That was something else entirely. I'm allowed to be nervous."

The defensive edge to his voice isn't lost on me and I brave a hand to his forearm. Immediately he stills. "Relax. It's just me."

He sighs, rolling his eyes as if to say _yeah, and that's the problem_, but says, "Yeah."

We arrange an assortment of vegetables and fruits on the counter. As to spare his gifted fingers, I delegate the easily choppable ones to him. At his instance (likely a ploy to get something other than silence between us and get the ball rolling), I explain what we're going to do and how we combine the things in front of us to make pineapple salsa.

His ploy works and we are chatting. The conversation isn't normal, but it's easy. I tell him about my day. He tells me about his. We talk about Mia's wedding. I chastise him for popping the few pineapple chunks he's managed to avoid mangling with his paring knife into his mouth. He smirks and my knees go weak. We are a soft symphony of small talk and methodical chopping. I am midway through telling him about the Berkley extern catching one of our stable of authors in a big fat plagiarism lie when I realize he's no longer chopping. I look up and my heart only starts beating again when I realize he's not standing in front of me with a bloody stump of a paw.

"What's wrong?" It sounds less panicked and sharper than I intended, but he doesn't react to my tone.

"Just… I've missed you. I've missed this." We are just inches away from one another and he tucks a strand of hair behind my ear with pineapple juice sticky fingers as he bumps my right hip with his left. "I've missed us. I've missed hearing about your day and telling you about mine."

For the first time in weeks I don't feel like blaming him for anything, so I just smile, nodding. "Yeah. Me too."

He steals away another piece of pineapple from his bowl of mangled produce and gives me a grin that makes my belly flutter. "I've missed you and also wanted to tell you that the tag is still on your sweater." His fingers sweep across my upper arm and give a firm tug on the tag that is sure-as-hell dangling from my armpit. The tag doesn't give and his fingers linger at my shoulder. "Probably want to use some scissors on that… don't want to snag it… it's a very nice sweater for sixty three bucks."

"Fuck," I mutter, blushing twelve shades of red as I rip it free and shove it into the back pocket of my shorts. He is beaming now, humming softly under his breath and glowing like he's the funniest man on earth.

"Oh god, it was funny." He pats my back pocket where the tag has been laid to rest. Between breathy laughs, he sighs, "Finish your story, Ana."

I can't help but return his smile and return his hip bump as I launch back into the story.

An hour later we are on the back deck, barefoot and carefree, eating swordfish and pineapple salsa and sipping dry red wine even though it doesn't really go with what we're eating. Christian has an uncharacteristic political bent tonight and he's railing on our "fucking swine" of a congressman and reacting almost viscerally when I joke about him running for office, about me becoming a politician's wife. We talk about movies and music and how pathetic our garden looks, which means we should probably listen to his mother's advice about fertilization.

After dinner, we start a fire in the fire pit down by the water and I am leaning back against the arm rest with my feet in his lap, his fingers tracing absent patterns over the bump of my ankle. We are quiet as we finish our post-dinner wine and watch the sun fight with fire against the horizon. It feels like I am blurting it out, but I've thought about it ten thousand times since he toed his shoes off in the entryway like he's some sort of guest in the home we built together.

"Are you going to stay here tonight?"

I don't even need to look at him to know he is shaking his head. "Us being apart right now isn't the worst idea we've ever had." His breathing is even, but I can see the sigh building below his ribs. "Or it wasn't the worst idea _you've_ had. I'm joining in the idea for the time being, I guess."

Even though my brain tells me him not being here in our home is of my own doing, the fact hurts somehow.At the same time, I refuse to believe asking him to go was an overreaction, but the fact that he isn't clamoring to be home anymore strikes something deep in me. I resolve to stop thinking about it because the conflict between everything I feel is making my head swim and I just want to enjoy him right now.

"This right here, though, this is perfect, Anastasia." His fingers coast up my knee and squeeze gently.

I can't disagree, so I sit up, readjusting my legs until my feet dangle over the edge of his arm rest and I can rest my forehead on his shoulder and my lips to the sleeve of his shirt. He tastes like laundry detergent and the slightest hint of cologne. I can hear his heart beating. It is an even _bump bump_ in his chest. _My fifty is so calm. _I close my eyes again, just letting the sound of his heart beating and his breathing bring me back to where we were. I hear him whisper '_I love you_' at one point and I smile into his chest. When I open my eyes, the threat of this being a dream slices through my mind at warp speed until the reality of being curled against him washes over me.

We stay like this until for what feels like hours until it starts to rain.

After we get the destruction of our salsa making cleaned up, it is nearly midnight and Christian awkwardly tells me that it's "about that time." Reluctantly, I nod, searching my mind to find any excuse to keep him here with me. "I'm seeing Flynn tomorrow at seven. Want to meet me at that little hellhole over by his office? Maybe around eight?"

I nod, knowing immediately he is talking about the dive bar tucked away between a one-man Harley repair shop and a shop that sells knock off Louis Vuitton and Coach bags. I know why he likes the bar – it is a place where the clientele give approximately zero fucks that Christian Grey is there.

I am wringing my hands and curling my fingers into the hem of my sweater as he leans against the wall tying his shoes. The words '_stay with me, stay just for tonight… and every night_' bubble in my voice box, but I don't say anything. My mouth is so dry. He is back in his blazer and shoes and looks so buttoned up again. I free my hands from their interlocked grasp inside the ball of sweater material when I see that his hands are open, free and easy at his sides. I don't want to look like the total wreck I am.

"Come here," he whispers, his voice sounding as dry and gravely as I know mine would if I were to speak right now. His eyes set a fire inside of me and I know what is going to happen.

Without hesitation, I step forward and meet his chest, not losing his eyes. The kiss is soft and tentative, his warm and dry lips meeting mine. I briefly hope that my lips aren't dehydrated and chapped, but the conscious thought of my hope disappears as I start to breathe him in. He tastes like chocolate cherries and dry red wine and smells like the man I wake up next to. My senses combined are enough for my breath to tangle in my throat and my heart to stop beating for just a moment. I sigh into his mouth and tilt my head slightly when his fingers reach the sides of my neck, just resting there, warming my skin with electricity like he wants nothing else in life than me. My mouth opens slightly at the sensation of his fingers there and my heart pounds faster and faster. The edges of my body melt into him, crushing our shadows together, when his tongue drags gently along my lower lip.

Our lips aren't negotiating, we aren't fighting for dominance, and we aren't dwelling in _oh, just everything_ that has happened. I am just kissing him and he is just kissing me like it is our first time and our last time and best time.

Before I even know I'm doing it, I fist my fingers into the hem of his shirt and he groans into my mouth, his lips curling into a smile. He pulls back just enough so that the seal our lips have made breaks with a gentle pop.

"Tomorrow?" he says, his voice low, his fingers still on my throat.

"Tomorrow," I reply, tugging gently at the bottom of his shirt.

He nods, making small circles along my jaw with his fingers. His eyes are slate grey, like a storm far off the coast, right now and they are moving slowly along my face like he is seeing something new that he can't quite figure out. He doesn't close his eyes as his lips brush against mine for just the barest of moments and it is simultaneously one of the most chaste and most intimate moments we have had in an incredibly long time. "Good night."

Unable to do anything other than echo him, I nod and say, "Good night."

His body backs away from mine before his hands leave me and as he is walking down the driveway to his car, I tell him I love him because I do, more than anything.


	13. Chapter 13

_**Thanks to you guys for sticking with this and for all of your kind words. This is incredibly unpolished, but I thought I'd try to get it up before I head out for the weekend. Have a great Saturday! xx. Belle**_

**13.**

I arrive at Buchannan's before Christian and of all the dark corners in the bar, I find us the darkest booth possible. I am nursing a bottle of Stella Artois when he comes in, tie loose at his neck, his jacket unbuttoned, and fine creases along the front of his suit pants from sitting. He looks incredibly tired. He spots me almost immediately and smiles a smile that takes years off of his appearance.

"Hey you." His greeting is accompanied by a smirk as he slides into the booth next to me.

"Hey yourself," I reply, sliding him his own sweating bottle. "How was Flynn?"

He rolls his eyes dramatically as he takes a long pull from the bottle, tipping his head back slightly. "The usual. Very full of advice. Very shrinky."

"How was your day?"

He turns to face me, crossing his ankle over his knee under the table and picking at the label on his bottle aimlessly with his thumb. "The usual in this shitty economy. I lost a lot of money today and made a lot of money today and ended roughly where I started… maybe slightly in the black." His hand finds mine and he turns it over, inspecting my palm with an intent gaze as if he were a psychic. Those hands know me. I know those hands. "Your day?"

I muster a husky whisper of: "Fine." I feel myself leaning towards the warmth of his body radiating out of his jacket in the over-air conditioned bar. His smirk says he sees right through me. He carefully arranges my hand in my lap and brings his face to mine and his thumb to my lower lip.

"You look incredibly pretty today," he says, his voice just loud enough over the whir of the air conditioning and the classic rock with the too loud bass making the booth shiver beneath us. He is looking at me like it's my turn, so I accept the invitation and move in towards his mouth. His warm breath is laced with peppermint and it brushes over my lips as I lean into him. My heart is thundering inside my chest as my lips touch just the corner of his mouth. As still as a statue, Christian is just watching me hover inches from his face. I back away from him just slightly, the intensity of his eyes making me feel flushed from my belly through my chest and neck and face.

We order pizza and more beer and set into a discussion of whether my mother's new boyfriend is going bald underneath his comb over (further investigation needed), whether the Seattle Mariners have a chance of taking it in the American League this year (no), and which of us is a more likely candidate to drive the Sunday _New York Times_ crossword to completion (it's a tie; with a laugh he admits that I have a bigger vocabulary, but he is willing to sneak answers off of my crossword when I refill the coffee). We discuss autumn landscaping at the house (with an ache in me that feels like falling through the gates of hell because it's not our _home_ at the moment because he's not there) and whether we think Taylor and Gail are going to get married now that they've both moved out of the house and into the bungalow Christian had built halfway across our property.

When we leave the bar it happens more quickly than I can comprehend – my hands are wound into Christian's suit coat and my lips are on his throat. He turns us until he has me pressed against the side of his car, his hands at my hips and a growl low in his throat. My lungs feel like they are going to burst, but I can't stop them from furiously working over his Adam's apple and up to where the stubbled underside of his chin meets the sharp line of his jaw.

I can hear Flynn's disproving voice in my head like nails on a chalkboard – hysterical bonding, a need I might find myself having to _prove something_ to myself, that after all of this that I am Christian's and that Christian is mine. But this feels so real – so primitive and boiling in my bones and blood and joints and blistering in Christian's fingers at my hips – this is not an emotional response to the now-disappearing feeling that I may never trust this man again.

No, no, that's not it.

This is me needing him, needing to make love to him like nothing has come between us. Maybe this is what Flynn meant when I had an hour-long telephone conversation with him earlier today, but I don't care right now. Maybe I know what I need more than Flynn's education and his experience tell him about our relationship.

_Yes. Yes._

I can feel and smell and taste everything right now – the humidity in the muggy air, the pavement settling now that the sun has gone down, the sweat lingering on Christian's jaw from his late afternoon workout, the cologne I buy for him but he hates wearing that lingers at his lapels, the bright citrus of the shampoo I buy for both of us, the garlicky sweet tang of pizza sauce in his mouth, the goose bumps rising on my chest and arms and stomach and his wrists.

My hands wedge between us and I find his belt buckle, my synapses apparently failing to fire in a reminder that we are in a _parking lot_ of all places. He pulls back. "No, no. Stop."

I hiss and he removes my fingers the neck of the belt. "What?" I ask testily, blowing a chunk of hair out of my eyes.

"Not here." I can see him bite down on the inside of his cheek as the realization that the moment is over washes over both of us. Nonetheless, he sweeps his palm over my stomach and watches as I unconsciously arch into him. "We aren't rushing into this in some half lit parking lot with your dress shucked up around your waist and my dick through my zipper."

The petulant part of me whines at this, but the rational part of me, the romantic part, and the part that loves him more than anything in this world thank God that at least one of us is thinking. I nod, running my fingers up his wrists and bringing my hands to rest on his elbows. He drops a soft kiss to my lips before taking a single step back and removing his hands from me.

The abruptness with which the press of his body is gone leaves me feeling like I am tumbling into a hole, until he says, "Tomorrow? We can go out… somewhere nice. I'll make a reservation."

Words have abandoned me, so I smile and nod. Suddenly I feel like I am soaring nine hundred stories high, simultaneously falling and flying. The reverence with which he is treating this is so dear to me and strums something deep inside of me.

"Okay," he says.

I can't stop smiling and I find it in my chest to respond, "Okay."

This is what it feels like to date my husband.

From the parking lot he turns left and I turn right. Before I can convince myself otherwise, I am turning the wrong way, turning away from home, disappearing down streets that I just barely know to get to a destination I know all too well.

I am in Escala's parking garage before I realize what I'm doing and at the door to the first home we shared together before I can second guess any of it.

Christian is standing in the kitchen, still wearing his suit pants and his button down shirt, leaning over the espresso machine that is screaming and sputtering the last of a cup of coffee into a black mug. His suit coat and tie are neatly folded over the bar stool at the counter. Without a word, I run my hand along the length of the coat, watching him. Just as Kate said, the place isn't _dirty _per se, but it looks like an explosion of dirty dishes and pizza boxes. My heart falls and I feel tears in my eyes, not wanting to go further and see the bedroom he has fashioned out of the living room.

He begins to speak without turning around and without a greeting. "Taylor, I was thinking we should get Ros a bit more security for her trip to the Philippines."

He turns before I can let '_it's just me_' pass between my lips. For a moment I wonder if he is going to pass out. His eyes are absolutely burning, burning me from the very core of me out. "I didn't want to go to the house," I admit, setting my purse and keys on the countertop. Nervously, I toss a chunk of hair over my shoulder.

Swallowing, he nods, taking the coffee from under the machine and holding it out to me. "It's that amaretto-y perfumed stuff you like. It's all that's left here. I need to go to the store… or have Taylor go, or something… want it?"

I shake my head, finding a directness I didn't know I had anymore. "I want to go to bed."

The storm in his eyes darkens almost imperceptibly and he sets the coffee on the counter. In a single stride he is on me, pulling my shoulders and waist to him and sealing his mouth over mine. I respond, needing him and willing him to unzip me and crawl inside. He can't be close enough, so I claw at his shirt and plunge my hands into his hair, cranking my body towards him with a high-pitched whine to oppose his belly-driven growl. His hands and hips and mouth and breath combine and are absolutely _everywhere_ on me. Need is consuming me and I feel disembodied as I set to work on the buttons of his shirt and his belt and fly. My head feels like it is resting twenty feet away and my eyes are simmering hotly. I am blinking rapidly to press down the heat in my head and probably look a little crazed when he pulls back and looks at me with the most attractive scowl that I've ever seen. The scowl turns into a smile as he turns his attention to sucking the curve of my ear.

"I am burning up," I groan into his neck, the only description I can muster for this feeling.

My admission is met with a low moan and a breathy '_me too_.'

We separate as my dress comes over my head and his fingers spread across my collarbones and throat and jaw as his mouth nips along my ear. He is whispering graveled gratitude into my neck as he licks and sucks and nips and kisses and bites and tastes me.

When his fingers ghost between my legs he growls at the readiness he finds before divesting me of my underwear and bra. He steps out of the pants pooled at his feet and drops to his knees to press his lips against my stomach. My fingers knot into his hair and I slide down against his face, his lips moving along my stomach and sternum, over my chest, along the column of my throat to my chin as I sink to my knees. I don't want a prelude to this; I don't want anything other than to be inside one another.

"I never did this with her," he promises in a soft whisper, his hands knotting into my hair. Her name is gone from our vocabulary, but his reassurance is well placed.

"I know. I know." I trust him. I believe him, so I sigh, arching into him and catching his shoulders to lean us back. The floor is cold and ridged and awkward and feels unswept beneath my back, but I can't wait right now. I need him to show me how much he needs me. I need to show him that I can't keep going on without him. When his fingers move back to me, I shake my head, clamping my thighs over his hand. He looks like he is about to die and I can see the spring in him coiling ever tighter, waiting for me to just say '_no, this is over for tonight._'I drag my thumb over the seam of his lips until it is just inside his mouth and he gives the pad of it a wet kiss. "I just want you."

For a moment, a terrifying moment where I feel like I am going to lose him, he just hovers over me and stares, his fingers caught dumbly between the vice of my legs, my hand against his chest. He nods as he says, "Ana, I love you."

Nodding, I respond with my own '_I love you_' and let my legs fall apart. He breathes my name as he slides into me. The show on his face almost kills me, his lips parted and his eyes falling to half-mast, his breath coming in a hiss. I arch my back into him and claw his body to press into mine. On slippery knees, he tries to get leverage on the slate tile floor and fails, slipping forward and hitting the just the right spot inside of me. I groan, arching into him as he steadies himself with one hand on an open cupboard door. The slick pressure of his movements is firm and practiced – he knows every inch of me, the sound every touch will elicit, the way each kiss will make me move, and his every move is so deliciously perfect that I feel like I am drunk on him.

My head grates against the slate tile as he picks up the pace and I whimper slightly. The grimace of pleasure on his face turns to concern as he slips his fingers behind my neck, supporting me as he pivots us up into a sitting position, my legs around his waist. "I'm fine," I mumble before he can ask, pressing my breasts into his chest and taking his mouth to mine to urge him on.

His arms wrap around my stomach and he continues to move as much as he can with me sitting on him. Through my high, the dull ache in the back of my head is as delicious as the simmering low in my belly. After a moment I begin to move against him. Even as he lets me set the pace, whispering my name and curse words into my neck as I move, I feel incredibly possessed by him in the most delicious way possible.

The end sneaks up on us both when my mouth opens in a silent scream against his lips partway through a blistering kiss. I still against him from above and pull him deeper as my orgasm splits me in half. Just as the white light behind my eyelids fades, with a groan he grinds out my name and finishes. I am holding him so tightly that I know he'll wake with my domineering fingertip bruises blooming darkly and deep in his tanned skin. He leans until his back is resting against one of the cupboards, still inside of me, his hands smoothing my hair and running down the sweaty ridge of my spine.

"Come home," I eventually sigh into the sweaty curve where his neck meets his shoulder. I am so alert right now, every nerve buzzing through the sleepy tug of exertion in my limbs. Even though every part of my body is aching and heavy, I am still simmering inside and craving every inch of him.

He is silent for a moment, but I feel him nod, his fingers tangling into the sweaty mess of my hair. "Tomorrow."

Shaking my head, I lean back slightly to look at him. "No." He grips my hips and lifts me off of him easily before screwing together his eyebrows in confusion. "Tonight," I correct, dropping back against his chest.

This is what it feels like to find ourselves again.


	14. Chapter 14

_**You guys… I'm all gushy. Thank you for being so unwaveringly kind. I appreciate you all. xx. Belle**_

**14.**

Christian leaves everything at Escala and we reenter our home with nothing that has been taken away. "Everything I want is at home," he had explained, buttoning his shirt as I slipped my shoes back on.

Standing in the entryway of our home, it looks like he is about to ask permission to take his jacket off and hang it in the hall closet. Before he can open his mouth, I am slipping it from his shoulders from behind and hanging it up myself. What am I supposed to say? _Make yourself comfortable?_ For god's sake, we have lived here for years and every piece of wood and steel and tile and fiber of carpet has his hard work, money, and style in it.

"Want to catch the end of the news or something?" he asks, raking a hand through his hair.

I shake my head; the weariness in my bones is making it almost difficult to stand now that the adrenaline that pumped through me on the apartment floor has started to wane. "You can watch whatever you want. I'm going to go to bed."

"No." He brushes his lips over my forehead. "I want to go to bed with you tonight."

Christian's arms wind around my shoulders and hold me to him and I wind mine around his waist. I can smell us through his shirt – our sweat, my perfume, his cologne, the slippery slide from our bodies moving together. It is a delicious mix.

After a few minutes of silently holding one another, we make it to the bedroom. Too tired to shower, we undress on our respective sides of the bed, our eyes not leaving one another. We watch one another like each move will expose a new sliver of skin that's undiscovered and as yet unseen.

Our fingers work in tandem along the buttons of our clothes – his along his dress shirt, mine along the silk bodice of my dress. His hands work his belt from its clasp before going to the button and fly. My hands make quick work of the back zip of my dress's skirt and I go for my bra. He crawls onto the bed knees first, shaking his head. "Just like this."

Letting my trembling hands fall from the clasp, I am suddenly anything but tired. I raise myself to the bed on my knees and sit back on the heels of my feet, looking at him.

"I am so happy you're home… that you're here with me," I whisper, the moment getting a stranglehold on any potency I have ever had in my voice.

"I am, too. You have no idea, Ana." I cross my arms over my stomach, convinced he can see the butterflies fluttering against the skin.

"No. Don't do that. I want to look at you. Come closer."

I crawl two lengths closer to him, letting my arms fall to my sides and my hands to my lap. He doesn't move closer, he just looks at me, his breathing an even in-out, in-out, in-out. "What are you doing?"

A passion and ferocity floods his eyes as he crawls to meet me, his knees just inches from mine. "Memorizing this moment. Memorizing you." He says it plainly, as though it were obvious. "You have some new freckles."

His warm palm cups my shoulder before he skims his hands down my arms to my hands. He is so steady right now and the only thing that betrays him is the sudden hitch in his breath and the look in his eyes.

"Here," he whispers, his hands skimming up my arms again until he reaches my shoulders and allows his fingers to splay apart. "You didn't have these when I left."

His hand slips back to my shoulder blade and he leans forward to press his lips against the speckled skin. My breath hitches in my throat and my fingers claw at one another, fighting the urge to reach for him and greedily grab, grab, grab at him.

"You're so beautiful, but you look so tired," he grinds out, his voice changing. His fingers move to my temples and sweep over my eyebrows until my eyes flutter shut and he can drag his fingers over the lids and down to the warm hollow that holds bruise-purple circles.

"I didn't sleep much while you were gone," I breathe, allowing my lips to remain parted and my eyes closed.

I feel his warm breath on my face before he touches his lips to my closed eyes. "I didn't either. I tossed and turned and reached for you."

He isn't saying this to make me feel bad, I know that. He is trying to show me how much he needs me. "Nightmares?" I ask, opening my eyes and allowing them to look to the leathery silver puckered scars on his chest.

"A few," he concedes, his fingers moving down my face to skate along my jaw. He continues his exploration, finding my collarbones before skating down my chest to my ribs, over the curve of my stomach, and over to my hips. "You've lost some weight."

For once I don't feel criticized or commandeered when he mentions my weight and allow myself to move into his palm.

His lips press into the hollow below my throat and his hands rest at my hips.

"But you're very much the same in so many ways," he mumbles, his fingers skating over the lace waistband of my panties to my belly button. Glancing down to his hands, I see through his boxer briefs that he is hard. "Still my beautiful wife."

Inside, I am begging him to touch me, to kiss me, to rip my underwear off, and to make love to me until I am dizzy and drunk on him. I know that bringing this exploration to completion means more than having sex or making love or fucking until we are both sated and feel like jelly.

His warm lips find my forehead and my eyes flutter shut as he begins to press soft kisses along my temples and cheekbones and jaw and the bridge of my nose.

"I've missed home so much," Christian sighs into my neck as he closes the inches between our knees, gathering me up to him until I have one leg hooked around him and my arms are wrapped around his chest.

I nod, my chin bumping his shoulder and my cheek skating across his ear. "I know you have." Any other time saying something like that would feel condescending, but I know it like it is some irrebuttable presumption of our lives together. I feel something stir low in my belly and before I can think, I mumble on instinct. "I need you so much, Christian."

He disentangles our limbs and leans back, just looking and not moving. He has handed me the reins, and I take them, reaching for the clasp on my bra. After a too-long moment where my arms feel too heavy to free myself, I shed the bra to the floor and rise up slightly to slide my panties down, pivoting and raising my legs to get them over my feet. His eyes cloud, but they never leave mine. Even after all of this betrayal, after all of this fighting, after all of this separation, I have never felt so close to him.

He is waiting for me to do something, to say something, to urge him on, to tell him that this is okay, that this is heading where he thinks it's heading, and it is, so I do.

"Take your boxers off." I don't recognize my voice. The soft grunt that comes from his throat shows me that he doesn't recognize it either, but he complies, removing the last of the fabric between us. It has been a rare moment in our life together that I've been allowed to drive like this. It feels perfect and wrong and new all at once. I reach for his hand and roll us until he is on top of me. I feel him against my thigh and I whisper encouragement, feeling so incomplete without him inside of me. From here, we fall silent, and he works into me easily, our fingers tangled and my hand pressed into the bed. Christian looks like he is about to cry and I close my eyes, the thought of him shedding tears too much when I feel this close to him. He finishes first and stays inside of me until he works me over the edge with his thumb. As I fall apart at the seams around him, I moan the best approximation of my feelings for him and I open my eyes in time to see him smile.

We stay like that for what feels like eternity. I am pretty sure I fall asleep first and I let dreamless slumber roll over me.

I wake up early and feel like I am suffocating under the heat of Christian's weight on top of me and our thick comforter over him. I am sweating, he is sweating, and I feel almost dizzy. "Baby, wake up," I mumble, attempting to stretch out from the heat under the blankets. I blink a few times, yawning, before I realize he is muttering in his sleep. His brow is furrowed and his top lip is curled into a slight sneer. I know this face and my heart starts to race. "Christian, baby, please…"

I extricate a hand from his, which is wrapped around my fingers like a vice, and bring mine to his cheek, resting it there softly. He twitches deep in his core and he bucks against me. His legs wrap me to me to him tightly. My heart skips a beat.

"Christian, wake up." My voice is firm and loud, my fingers working to the crease between his brows. "Baby, you're having a nightmare. _Wake… up… now_."

His grey eyes shoot open and he groans, pulling me closer. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," he mutters into my hair. "I thought I lost you."

I sink my fingers into his sweaty hair, ignoring the disgusting way the cool air from under the comforter feels on my bare sweating arms. "It was just a dream, a really bad dream." I reassure him with my lips. His lips are like stone for a moment before they begin to soften and allow me to work against them. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

My heart cracks in half. This is the routine when we've had fights. We make up, we fall into bed, and we wake up with Christian absolutely convinced that he is alone. Right now, he remains silent.

"Are you listening to me?" I ask pointedly, fisting his hair and giving it a slight tug. "You've come home to me. I want you here. I am in the process of forgiving you. I trust you. You are not going anywhere, Christian. We are not anywhere near that."

"I'm listening."

I press my lips to his again, wanting nothing more than to erase the grimace slashed across his beautiful face. I shift and roll until I am lying on top of him, body-to-body. There is nothing sexual about this; I just need to feel as much of him against me as I can to drive the lingering shadows of his nightmare away… for both of us. "Are you understanding?"

"I'm listening, Anastasia." I know he is thinking at a mile a minute in that genius brain, so I just nod and tangle my hand into his, shifting until my face is lined up with his chest. I lay my cheek over his heart. It is still hammering under his ribs. I feel incredible guilt wash over me as I realize this is a visceral reaction to being asked to leave and that he will be battling with for a long time. I feel the guilt rise to nausea as I realize that my own self preservation was dependent on getting him out of here, allowing this feeling to mount.

"You're not going anywhere, Christian. You're here. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here. With you."

"I'm listening," he reaffirms a third time, giving my hands a squeeze. I close my eyes and fall into a pulsing trance set to his heartbeat.

We lay against one another for an hour before he speaks again.

"Can we take a shower? We're all clammy and smell like day-old sex." I smirk against his chest and drop a dry kiss above his heart before rising. "For someone with as fucked up attachment issues as I have, I sure as hell like the view of you walking away from me."

'And _there he is_,' I think as I toss a smirk over my shoulder. That is the man I know, the one I married, the one I have woken up with for years. The one with the smart mouth that spews thinly-veiled filth and loves me with everything he has.

Our shower is long and involves uncharacteristically little hanky panky – just a lot of laughing and kissing and a little hair pulling. When we have removed the tattoo of one another's smell from each other, we dress much like we undressed the night before – watching one another from across the room. I crawl across the bed to him to knot his tie.

I earn a half-hearted warning of '_you know what that does to me_'when I bite down on my lip. Another thing has changed because the lack of certainty in his weak warning doesn't betray its usual flush of dominance. It is more uncertain, like he is wondering whether _that_ has changed between us, too. When my fingers tighten the knot to its root at his throat, he catches my hand.

"I need to tell you something."

I cock my head to the side. He fingers one of the curls at my shoulder, looking away from me like he knows what he is about to say isn't going to make me happy. "Go ahead."

"I'm not going to be here this weekend."

My breath catches in my throat. I don't know if I had expected him to wipe his schedule clean for us or what, but for some reason it feels like a punch to the gut. "Okay." I am testing out my own voice.

He is searching for words, apparently not having expected me to let him steer this conversation. "I… don't know that… I…"

"Where are you going?" I try when it's clear he isn't getting there on his own. I do my damnedest to keep my voice even.

"Away."

I see the shutters close on his eyes and they darken. My heart is in my throat and my stomach is at my feet. I can't do this. I can't do this. I feel panic swelling in me like the sea as he steps back. _Away_. "I figured as much. Where, Christian?"

"I don't know that I can tell you, Ana. I mean, it's not something that will upset you, but I don't know that I'm ready to tell you. I've been working with Flynn a lot… and I am trying. Please believe that I am trying."

He sounds like a young boy pleading with his mother, not like a man letting his wife into his life. Instead, it feels like the exact opposite of that. I feel so silly for a moment, thinking that him coming home would be the end of all of this and we would be down for an easy slide into our rebuilt marriage. '_There is a lot of work to be done here, Ana_,' Kate had told me when I called her on the way home last night. And the gravity of what she had said hits me like a ton of bricks. I find words. "If it won't upset me, please just tell me where you're going and why."

"Trust me," he pleads, reaching to gather me into his arms. My heart feels like it stops beating.

"Let me in," I counter, letting him hold me, but feeling a wave of uncertainty wash over me.

"I will. I promise." His words have enough certainty to fill me with a warm hope. "I'm going to leave work at lunchtime. If you can leave, we'll spend the day together, okay?"

I nod, confused.

Something has changed and while we're at breakfast, our conversation is shallow and stilted. Gail is looking at us like we have four heads between us – apparently stunned into silence not only that he is _here_, but that we are talking to one another like strangers. For a moment I think she's probably right – we are a total fucking mess.

He kisses me when he leaves and I give him a smile.

I couldn't remember the drive to work if I tried. It isn't until I sit down at my desk and open my email that I am shocked back into reality and stop worrying, realizing the mess is not nearly as dark and twisted as I had imagined. My breathing evens after reading the email. His trepidation and his inability to be articulate make sense. I allow hope to swell and bash down my concern. I read his email again, just needing to make sure that I saw right the first time.

**From:** Christian Grey

**Subject:** Sorry

**Dated: **August 19, 2016 07:39

**To:** Anastasia Grey

I am sorry if what happened this morning was awkward or upsetting. I think I needed more time to get it out than what we had for the conversation, if I'm even able to have the conversation. Truth is, I don't know how to have this conversation. It's not because of what has been going on between us recently and it has nothing to do with you. It is all me, but I know I need to tell you. I know this is probably not the appropriate medium for this, but I am going to tell you anyway.

This is what I can tell you.

I am not going anywhere on business. I am going to Detroit. I need to go alone.

If you still want to spend the afternoon together let me know.

Christian Grey

CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc.

Even on the second read through, my heart stops and I reach for the phone, my hand hovering over the receiver for a moment before I decide against it. Instead, I type a response and chew a hole through the side of my mouth as I think.

**From:** Anastasia Grey

**Subject:** Re: Sorry

**Dated: **August 19, 2016 08:04

**To:** Christian Grey

Of course I want to spend the afternoon with you.

I'm not upset and I understand.

I love you.

Anastasia Grey

President and Publisher, Grey House Publishing, Inc.


	15. Chapter 15

_**As always, thank you all for sticking with this little story-o-mine. I appreciate all of your kind words and your enthusiasm as this goes on. xx. Belle**_

**15.**

Christian has an outdoor table at the café where we are meeting for lunch. He looks tense, his elbows on the table, his BlackBerry taking a beating under his lightning-fast thumbs, and his hair flopping over his forehead. I lean against the door that leads into the restaurant and study him for a moment. From afar he looks like the same Christian that I've lived with for years – the Christian who hasn't mulled over his demons to the point where he has decided to go to Detroit – collected, cool, purposeful, and more than a little aloof. I don't know why his composure surprises me and I don't know what I was expecting, but the fact that he is this calm and seemingly _normal_ is simultaneously unsurprising and a major shock.

I am seated across from him before he looks up and greets me. I reach across the table and steal the sweating glass of iced tea sitting in front of him for a long pull. The tea is too strong, a little bitter, and has a sickly sweet mint flavoring, but it succeeds at quashing the tickle at the back of my throat. When I replace the glass to the wet ring it has left on the white bistro paper "tablecloth," he catches my wrist and pulls my hand in to his lips. "Hello." His lips remain in a steady frown and he returns his attention to his phone with a whisper. "Sorry. Just a second."

When the waiter stops by for my drink order Christian finally stashes his phone and leans back in his chair to look at me.

"I suppose we are going to talk about the email," he says, his voice calculated like he rehearsed the line the entire way from his office to the restaurant. The calculation is a flicker at the edge of his controlled calmness and I see it show in the rigid twitch of his upper lip.

"If you don't want to, we don't have to," I offer, feeling somewhat charitable at the sight of his fingers destroying a paper cocktail napkin in his lap. "I just wanted to know where you were going and I can figure out why."

A long breath escapes his lips and he leans forward, his elbows on his knees. "Flynn thinks it would be a good idea."

"I don't disagree with Flynn, Christian. I just worry about you going alone."

Even through the shade of his sunglasses I can see his gaze rise to meet mine. He knows I am trying to invite myself along. "If I react to what I'm going to do there the way I _think_ I will, I'd prefer it if you aren't even in the same time zone."

"If you react to what I think you're going to do there the way I think you're going to react, I would prefer it if I was right there with you." I don't miss a beat and I am getting worked up, like I'm priming myself for a fight, and I immediately make a conscious decision to calm myself down. I am not mad at him. This is worry crawling up my throat like a thorny weed, choking me.

He gives me a sad half smile and takes off his sunglasses. "I know, baby. Just… can you let this one slide? I don't want to fight with you about this of all things."

_Remember. Calm. Stay calm. _It takes everything in me to nod and slip my hand over his on the table. He lifts it again and plants a second kiss on it. "When will you be leaving?"

"Tomorrow. I'm going to stop off in St. Louis for some business Thursday afternoon and leave on Friday morning for… everything else." He won't even say the words out loud. _Detroit. _For a moment I wonder if he can say it other than in email, but I decide to drop it, resigned to the fact that my presence there is one disagreement where he won't be wavering.

I swipe his iced tea and take another gulp. "What looks good for lunch?" I ask.

Lunch passes by in a relatively easy blur. At first I am uneasy with worrying about what he is going to see and do and how he is going to react in Detroit, but he seems collected and cool and hilariously Christian again. He is telling me stories about work, things he saw in the news, admitting abashedly that he committed us to dinner with his parents this evening, and adjusting my blouse to cover my purple bra strap before giving a blush-inducing assessment of what he wants to do with me when he gets me home.

After lunch we wander through the Sculpture Park hand-in-hand, just enjoying the sunshine and one another. He laughs when a seagull gets too close to me and I scream. He buys me a solitary white carnation from a street vendor. I blush when he comments on a smart ass remark I made a few years before about carnations being filler flowers unworthy of gifting. I kiss the words out of his mouth. He insists on taking a picture of me eating strawberry frozen yogurt on a park bench. He doesn't make a comment when I slip off my heels and start walking barefoot. Instead, he slips off his shoes and socks and does the same. He slips his back on when we get near the car and hitches me up onto his back piggy-back-style before I know what's going on. My strawberry-sticky fingers are on his suit coat and he says he doesn't care.

At home he follows through on his promise of divesting me of my blouse and pencil skirt and laying me down and spreading me out on the end of our bed in my purple bra before making come three times and plowing into me relentlessly, his face screwed up and pensive and like he is exerting everything he has to keep himself controlled. He stills, finishes, and falls on top of me in a panting heap.

Dinner at his parents' house is a casual affair and we chat over white wine and a lemon cream cake that Mia made at the restaurant where she is working. I help Grace clear the table and the awkwardness between us brings that thorny weed in my throat back to life. Now that we are alone, she is looking at me with a damp dishtowel in her hand and a storm in her eyes. I turn to get away from the storm and shimmy my engagement ring off to dip my hands into the foaming water in the sink.

"So are you two on the mend?"

I chew on the side of my mouth, responding with a simple and breathy whisper, "Yes." I have been waiting for this moment since we were in Napa – when she was looking at me like I was the antichrist, like I had ruined her baby.

"He isn't living in your guys' apartment anymore?"

The bubbles crawl up my wrists and I press my hands palm-down on the plates in the water. "No. He's home."

"Did he do something?" She pauses when I don't answer. "Did you ask him to leave?"

Breath hitches in my throat. I know she's just concerned, but this truly isn't _any_ of her business, but I answer anyway. "Yes. And yes again."

I hear Grace's sigh and feel her close in on me before her hand slips through the crook of my elbow and she gives me a squeeze. When she releases me, I turn to look at her and she has tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. "I know what he is doing, Ana. He has been asking me for anything I have from his time in Detroit. I am glad that he has you again, or that he's working on having you again."

I rinse my hands under the tap and dry them on the dishtowel Grace has set down. Because it's the truth I say, "He is always going to have me." It is true. We finish washing the wine glasses and filling the dishwasher in silence.

I find Christian in his old bedroom, hands in his pants pockets, looking out the window with a far-off look on his face. The sun is almost dipped under the horizon for the night and it casts a soft orange glow over the pale hardwood floors. The corners of the room have already fallen into shadow. The light makes him look like he is smoldering along his profile.

He doesn't turn around. "I had an ulterior motive coming here tonight," he admits, tilting his head towards his desk where a legal-sized manila folder is lying closed. "I have never had any reason to look at any of it. My parents were with me when I got my driver's permit and my first passport. I have no health history for my family because I have no health history in that folder. I have no clue what genes I have beyond the fucked up crack whore die-by-twenty-fucking-five genes. My only fucking health warning is to not get too close to street drugs because I'll become an addict, a prostitute, and die alone. I don't know if there's anyone even on the birth certificate where it says 'father.'"

I come up behind him and slip my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek to the middle of his back and wrenching my eyes shut. He grabs onto my wrists and wrenches my grip around his waist almost painfully tighter.

His tone shifts. "We could have a baby and I don't know if I'll live to see her graduate from high school or college or dance with her at her wedding." He pauses, his fingers easing their grip and his thumbs running over my wrists.

_Her_. My breath catches in my throat. I don't know what to say. The thought of having a child with him has never been so tangible based on his words. He's actually _thought _about this enough to picture a life with a child and me. _Her _high school. _Her_ college. _Her _wedding. His grip is now comfortable and I'm sure meant to soothe what he knows I'm feeling, this unidentifiable fear-confusion-love-worry feeling that makes me feel dizzy and sick for him.

"I take good care of myself. I don't smoke. I don't drink too much most of the time. I run six miles a day. I have a personal trainer. I wear sunscreen most of the time. I go to the doctor more than normal people should. I don't eat too much garbage." His voice hitches and I squeeze him, screwing my eyes shut even tighter. "I live my life around the principle that anything and everything can ruin me."

His words are so raw and more honest than anything I've heard in a really long time. He stays silent. "That's true for people who _know _that stuff, too," I mumble, warming his back through the smooth linen of the shirt with the deep blush that touches my cheeks. Anything in my head sounds a thousand times better than what is coming out of my mouth. My tongue is thick and inarticulate. My mind is racing. "I don't think that's the right thing to say to you right now, but I don't know what the right thing is, Christian. I can only listen. I can't know. Tell me."

He loosens his grip and turns around in my arms. He is smiling. "I know you can't know. There is no right thing to say. I don't even know." I must be crying because he swipes a thumb over my cheek. "Just having you listen is as good as it gets, Anastasia."

When we get home I sit cross-legged on the bed in a pair of white sleep boxer shorts and a tank top while he packs. After toiletries he stops for a minute and stands in his closet, his hands running over suit coats and button downs and down to the t-shirts he has always been obsessive about having pressed and hung rather than folded and shoved into a dresser drawer.

"What do you wear for something like this?" he asks. "Do I even know what I'm going to do there?"

He shoots me a look, choosing a pale summer suit in one hand and a t-shirt in the other. He holds them both up, raising an eyebrow as if to ask me my thoughts. I bite down on my lip and tilt my head, my fingers working my hair into a braid at the side of my head.

Christian groans, lowering his hands, and rolls his eyes with the flash of dark lust that I've seen hundreds of times before. Usually I allow him to follow through on the look, to bend me over, to truss me up, to collar me, to guide my face over him again and again with his firm grip at the back of my neck. His voice is even when he says, "Is that really necessary right now? Quit it with the hair, too."

I immediately release my lip, drop the half-finished braid to limply flop against my shoulder, and give him a tight smile. "Take both."

He stalks towards his open suitcase and open garment bag. After carefully situating them inside, he turns to me and rakes his fingers through the braid to undo it. "You and me, we…" Christian's voice trails off. "At some point, are we…"

I rise to my knees and balance myself as near the edge of the bed as possible, resting my hands on his shoulders. He presses his thumb to the spot on my lip where I had been chewing and he lets out a long, even sigh.

"We will," I promise, more for myself than him. At the thought of the room down the hall that Elliot left a blank canvas of hard wood and white walls that we have turned into our marital den of iniquity, I feel desire rush me and tilt our bedroom and make gravity fall away. "I'm going to need some more time for that, but we will."

I can't pinpoint the origin or meaning of the look in his eyes. It isn't relief, but it is warm.

The next morning, he wakes up early and climbs on top of me, fully dressed. He kisses me thoroughly, waking me up so I feel deliciously lazy. He is pressing me deep into the mattress with his suit-clad body and I know this isn't going to go anywhere because he smells like breakfast and toothpaste, like the start of the day, and has the plane set to take off for five thirty. When my hands bunch the front of his shirt and pull it from his pants he laughs and rolls off me before my lazy hands can get a grip on his hips or fist his suit coat and hold him in place.

"I will text you when I get to St. Louis and I will call you this evening. Late most likely."

He drops a kiss to my forehead.

"I'll see you Sunday."

I sit up and lean back against the mountain of pillows on our bed. "Sunday," I parrot.

When he is gone I roll across the mussed sheets on our bed and pull his iPad from his nightstand to book a Friday morning flight to Detroit.


	16. Chapter 16

_**Hello, hello! Sorry for the delay in getting this out. While I wasn't personally affected by Hurricane Sandy, a number of my family members on the East Coast were and it hasn't been a fun time. It was hard to think of this when my parents didn't have power for over a week. When that was out of mind, I played host to my little sister for a week. So, here we are. Back in the swing of things. Happy Sunday! xx. Belle.**_

**16.**

I spend Thursday poring over the final copyedits for a few books set for publication at the beginning of November. The day crawls by, punctuated only by a noon lunch with the Berkley extern and a senior editor and a text from Christian lamenting the fact that his hotel mini refrigerator is stocked with Bud Light and not something palatable. Around six, unable to face the prospect of going home to that empty house by myself one more time, I head over to Escala.

When I've finished eating some reheated soup and watering the plant on the kitchen sink, I change into one of Christian's t-shirts and a pair of yoga pants and set to cleaning the kitchen. After searching and destroying leftover pizza, taco wrappers, and about three hundred apple cores, I dismantle the makeshift bed Christian has put together on the couch with our bedroom duvet, blanket, and sheets. I sigh when I see a mostly empty bottle of whiskey tipped over above a dried brown stain in the white carpet. Thinking of him here alone with his bottle of whiskey stirs something deep in my belly – regret, sadness, longing, maybe a touch of anger.

My cell phone ringing jars me out of my reverie and I drop myself back onto the couch before answering.

"What are you doing?" Christian asks without saying hello. He sounds incredibly on edge.

"I'm over at Escala in your path of destruction trying to find the carpet and battle the fruit flies."

He sighs and I can picture him roughly combing his mop of dark copper hair back with his fingers. "You don't have to do that. I can go do it or tip Gail like I'm Bill Gates or something to do it." His words drip with guilt.

"I know, but I don't want to be home without you." I pause; I can't even hear him breathing. Finally, I whisper, "I did that long enough."

Another sigh escapes his lips and I draw my knees up to my chest. "I can appreciate that," he says tightly.

"What's wrong?"

"I want to come home." I purse my lips, knowing that if I don't say anything he will keep talking. He does. "I want to come home and be with you, undress you, hold you, fall asleep with you, wake up with you, eat dinner with you, watch you brush your teeth in the morning…"

My heart skips a beat. He sounds so far away. "I do have quite a unique way of brushing my teeth in the morning."

He offers a half-hearted chuckle. "I'm being serious, Anastasia. I don't want to do this."

"I know you don't, and I want you here, too, but it took you so long to get here." I hear him snort. "Understandably, Christian. I know why you didn't go back. Don't shut down on me right now."

His voice is quiet when he says, "I'm not." I believe him and nod as though he can see me. "I just don't want to talk about it right now."

Neither of us says anything for a moment. For my part, I lean my head against the back of the couch, wrap a blanket around myself, and revel in the warm smell of Christian's body wash and shampoo.

"Left to your own devices you certainly know how to freeze a girl to death. The air conditioning in here is set at sixty-six degrees."

He lets out a soft chuckle.

"What are you wearing?" he inquires darkly.

"Seriously?" I can't stop myself from letting an unattractive snort-giggle slip through my lips and tightening the blanket around my shoulders as my stomach flips.

"Totally serious," he laughs, his voice betraying the fact that he has no plan whatsoever for following up on his first question.

"Yoga pants and one of your t-shirts. I need to go figure out where you store all of the winter gear because I'm going to need a parka for bed if I don't want to die from the death of chill."

His laugh is heartier this time and betrays a part of himself that I haven't seen since before he left me alone in our kitchen stained with tears and mascara and betrayal – the Christian who is so open to joking and teasing with me. It is welcome and warms me. "Try again."

"Agent Provocateur from head to toe?" I try with a smirk.

He lets out a theatrical groan. "Oh yeah, baby." He laughs again and I hear him readjust. For a moment I think about joking about our den of iniquity upstairs and think better of it. It's not something to joke about at the moment; both for his sake and what he is going to do tomorrow and for mine because I don't know if either of us could follow through on any playful banter at the moment. An image of him lounged out on the hotel bed in just pajama pants flickers across my mind and the red room of pain falls away from my consciousness.

"What are _you_ wearing?" I try, inspecting my toenail polish.

"Just a smile," he responds, the smile in his voice apparent. "That's a total lie. I'm at a desk in my hotel room looking at spreadsheets in a full suit."

Grinning, I bite down on the pad of my thumb and the conversation shifts to an easy flow. We talk – just about our days, the weather, his sudden desire to get a dog for fishing, visiting my dad for Memorial Day, whether I should bother ever visiting St. Louis, the merits of the Mariners' recent trade for a pitchers from the Yankees who never even crossed the threshold of the pitching mound in New York – until I am drifting to sleep on the couch.

"You're tired, aren't you?" he asks, his voice just barely above a whisper. "You should go to bed. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

"Stay on the phone with me," I respond, shedding my blanket and shivering as I walk towards the bedroom. From the hollow sound of his "of course" and the sound of clothes rustling, I can tell he has me on speakerphone.

As I slip between the fresh sheets and blankets I've put on the bed and pull his pillow to my chest, I smile at the sound of his sigh as he does the same halfway across the country. "Sleep." It's a soft command. I hear the table lamp on his end click off and a hollow punch to a pillow to form it to his shoulder. "Go to sleep, Ana." And to the sound of his breathing from hundreds of miles away, I do.

The next morning I wake up with my fingers deep in Christian's pillow. The entire thing is a blur. Gail calls from our house to make sure I'm okay after not coming home and I assure her that I'm fine, that I won't be back yet tonight, and to have a nice weekend. She sounds concerned and I'm sure she knows I'm up to something. Even though Gail has always been on my side the way Taylor is on Christian's, I don't want to chance letting her in on my plan.

I make a fair effort to suppress the guilt of following Christian to Detroit with a cup of bitter airport coffee and read the SkyMall catalogue for half of the flight. I spend the other half of the flight looking out the window at the greater Midwest pass beneath the airplane, trying to create an exhaustive list of plans A through Z for how I'll react based on what Christian learns in Detroit.

When I arrive in Detroit, I settle into a hotel before calling him.

His phone goes straight to voicemail. Guilt continues eating me as I leave a message, telling him that I love him and that I'll talk to him soon.

I order room service for lunch and perch myself in bed with a folder of work and my laptop with some trashy daytime talk show on in the background, but with the volume muted. My mouth is full of whole grain bread, chicken salad, and lettuce when my phone rings. I jump almost sky high.

"What're you doin'?" I sputter in a horrid slur, spraying crumbs down the front of my clothes in greeting him.

"Met with a lawyer." He sounds like he's in a mood. "Going to grab a bite to eat."

"Are you okay?"

"For now." His response is clipped and somewhat snarky – like I shouldn't even deign to ask him.

Silence crackles between us. I fight the urge to ask where he is specifically so I can go to him.

"I don't know why I called you. I don't mean to be short with you. I'm sorry I don't know what to say."

I brush the crumbs from my shirt half into my hand and half onto the duvet and wander over to the balcony off of my room and look out across the city. The mid-summer humidity and heat are causing my skin to crawl and sweat to spring from every pore on my body underneath the suffocating thickness of my sweatshirt. "You don't have to be sorry. I'm glad you called."

"I just wanted to hear your voice, I guess."

I squint against the pounding heat of the sun as if I'll be able to look through the whole of the city and track him down if I look intently enough. "Take this slow, okay? You don't have to shove everything into one day. You have all weekend."

His sigh is muffled over the phone. "Yeah, yeah. Call you tonight."

"I love you."

He says something that sounds roughly like _mmmhmm_ before saying, "Love you, too, Anastasia."

By six, my eyes are crossing from reading and I decide to take a shower. I rest my forehead against the wall of the shower, letting the water rain down over me from the overhead showerhead. I made a pact with myself on the plane ride over here – I will leave him alone if and until he asks for me. My hand clenches into a fist and relaxes over and over again as I chant the pact like a mantra, just to remind myself before my legs develop a mind of their own and I'm off after him down streets I don't know in a city I've never visited.

After my shower, I sit on the edge of the bed in a towel, mindlessly flipping through TV channels and chewing on my thumbnail. I feel absolutely useless. Picking up my phone, I punch Christian's phone number in from memory and allow my finger to hover over the call button. I don't want to disturb him, but I'm about to crawl up the drapery from my nerves. I jump when the phone lights up beneath my fingers with his picture; he is calling me. I answer before the first ring is over with a breathy _hey_.

"Hey," he responds quietly. "What are you doing?"

"Flipping through channels, not watching anything, thinking of you." _In Detroit_. The mental addition makes me shiver.

"Hmmmmm," he sighs. There's a dull drunk edge to his slur. "I had a grandmother here. I lived with her for six months when I was three. The courts made her my temporary guardian while my mother was in treatment. She had a yellow house with a chain-link fence around the front yard and a play set with a slide. I kind of remember her – she smelled like cinnamon and White Diamonds perfume and clove cigarettes. She gambled and smoked and had a throaty laugh. She yelled at Ella a lot. She probably saved my life by getting me out of that apartment."

I hear the clink of ice in a glass and the deep gulp of his swallow. The revelation has come out like a waterfall and makes the line crackle emptily between us when he stops speaking. But then he starts again before I can get my wits about me at his openness.

"She's dead – been dead for a long time." He snorts like it's funny. "Her husband left them when Ella was seven. He could be around. I don't fucking care, either way."

I don't know what to say, but he keeps talking in his soft inebriated way.

"The apartment building where we lived is gone – it's a dirt lot now with yellow caution tape and construction cones around it. It's a total slum. Even worse than before. But my grandma's house is still there, according to the lawyer; I'll go tomorrow. You can come, too."

Breath catches in my throat.

"Well, I know you're here, Anastasia. I'm not stupid. You used a joint credit card to buy a ticket after I left home yesterday. I knew you did it five minutes later. You honestly didn't think that Sawyer and Taylor give you that wide of a berth that you can get on an airplane to Detroit without someone noticing, right?"

The thought had crossed his mind, but I had probably made a subconscious decision to ignore that inconvenient fact. Something grips my throat from inside and I am immediately terrified that I am going to lose him – not in the grander sense of our lives, but with how free he has been with what he's seeing here. "Are you mad? I'm just worried about you being alone."

"No. I'm not mad, but I think you're foolishly in love with me, though."

_Not this again_, my subconscious groans, awaking from a years-long slumber. "Stop it. I'm not playing that game with you. I love you. Just stop. You're the love of my life and you deserve it." Elena Lincoln's face is laughing at the edge of my subconscious.

"I want to see you," he sighs. "But I don't think it's a good idea. I'm angry about today and I'm drunk."

"I don't care." And I don't. I'm not afraid of him; I'm worried about him.

He snorts and the ice clinks against the glass again as he swallows. "Remember when we were first getting to know one another and I told you why I was into what I'm into?"

I nod rather than say anything. I will him not to say anything – _he likes to whip pretty little brunettes that look like the crack whore_. I shudder a little and close my eyes.

"You're my wife. I'm spent, emotionally. If you come over here I am going to knot your hair in my fist and turn your pretty ass so red you won't sit right for a week." He stops for a moment before sighing, "I don't want to do that to you because I'm mad at the fucking shitty mother I had."

I bite my cheek until I taste blood. He's done it to me before – turned my bottom so red it ached to sit – but since we've ended punishments and I've let myself feel it as erotic and as evidence of our closeness. He's never done it out of anger that's directed to someone or something else. No. I breathe. _I trust him. _"You know that you wouldn't do that to me out of anger from your mother. Trust yourself a little."

Christian is quiet before asking, "What room at The Westin are you in?"


End file.
